FINDING A SOFTNESS

Nov 2024

A solo exhibition of works self curated and represented, showcased at The Space, pop-up gallery Agora Village Lusaka. The new body of work was made over a 12 month period and saw a freshness and lightness in comparison to my works exhibited in the previous years collection, with a palette of soft pinks, greys, lilacs and greens but balanced with heavier blocks of color and vigorous mark making to achieve a disruption and an unsettled movement. A push and pull, leading with the idea that there is beauty in imperfection on the face of it but also notice the imperfection and make room for the uncomfortable, we begin to find something else. This intention is aligned with my appreciation of dualities, soft and hard, dark and light, ordered and chaotic, lost and found, in order to extract meaning. Through the paintings on canvas and paper and the central installations, I wanted to bring to light both the deeply moving and deeply troubling aspects of the human condition. Through the work I express my grapple with emotions, drawing from my journal writings and translating these into the installations using words, phrases, extracts etched into the surface with a soldering iron and again with discarded symbolic objects and fragments hand stitched with textile and form . The artworks evolved from a deeper consideration of current socio-political issues, most specifically with the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, affecting cultural landscapes and identity and posing personal unsettling questions. This exploration of identity in a new context led me to take a closer look at the tapestry of my own life, childhood experiences and reflecting on my personal relationships with my mother and father and those I know and love. The installations ‘House Of Cards’ and ‘Stories On My Chest’ were a central to the body of work. They were site specific and placed in the middle of the room in order to cause an obstruction, become an ‘elephant in the room’, a confrontation of the ‘valued’ side by side with the throwaway, mirroring the nuance in how we choose to see and acknowledge certain things and other things that perhaps make us uncomfortable, we ignore and pretend do not exist. The exhibition as a whole was both deeply personal, revealing my own empathies and vulnerabilities but was also an attempt to connect with the viewer on a deeper level. I continue to explore juxtaposition, paradox and experiment with the physical (material) as metaphor, noticing what is conterintuitive but true. The sensitive narrative was not altogether hidden but rather subtlety and gently expressed through text, palette and material. It was an opportunity for me to exercise a daringness that associates the absence of fear and a feeling of being alive..

(For write ups on the installation works, links attached)

RAW PORTRAYALS

Nov 2023

A primal emotive response to raw feelings, memories and the shared experience. The chosen palette was my conceptual starting point and so the body of work evolved with earth tones, organic forms and mediums with ‘raw edges’ dominate and speak to the natural and real-states, metaphors for tenderness and pain and the fragility and robustness in life and death. The mixed media paintings carry abstract narratives and incorporate layers of drawing, painting, etching, textures, color fields, transfer photography and signature mark making. The vulnerable figurative depictions explore subconscious, childhood memory and womanhood that look to instill emotions that transcend time, class and demographics. The titles of the pieces in this body of work are functional (as true with all my work) and play an important role in creating a gateway in the gaps; a three-way between the aesthetic, material and linguistic. I continue to explore the theme of the vessel and show a collection of painted calabash and carved wood pedestal, the metaphor for the woman as the carrier and the plinth the counterpart. I repeat the motif in the drawings on paper and the etched paintings in cork and then also in a new exploration of it’s symbolism, in a series of still life paintings, where nature inspired marks and botanical line are interwoven . The body of work is interplayed with a tactile installation, a hanging layered tapestry. Three strips of earth stained canvas with segments and layers of torn textile, text and photographic imagery, playing with transparency, order, method, divides and connection. Materials go beyond the traditional with rusted metal, wood, organic forms and cork which are in conversation with the works on canvas and paper, to achieve an immersive experience that triggers the connections the chosen theme. Portrayals of the inner in relation to the outer - tender, raw and unapologetic.

(Link for synopsis & exhibition catalogue)

New List Item

SCATTERED BELONGINGS

Nov 2023

The collection as a whole has elements of having been put together in segments, the same way the side o the road shelters (Ntembas) are constructed and the way the goods and clothing is grouped and bundled. The process of building onto, stitched together, layering, covering, discarding and retrieving as well as the reuse and recycling of materials is present.

In the larger canvas works, transferred photography images, text, gestural drawing, lines and spontaneous mark making can be seen on top painted or layered backgrounds. Hand drawn text and collaged drawn and painted elements result in ‘chaotic’ compositions that invite the viewer to explore the paintings from their edges rather than from the center out.

As a child I remembers the anticipation of sorting through piles of secondhand clothes in hopes of finding something to cherish and give a second life to. On school holidays visits to ‘The Market’ to buy clothes was something my sisters and I would look forward to and where the majority of our wardrobe came from. My interest in finding value in something used and discarded has probably stemmed from that time as is my appreciation of surface textures that appear to have been eroded by time and natural elements.

‘Deconstructed Ntemba’ was a hanging installation comprising of 88 wood blocks that have been covered/clad in materials commonly used to make the city stalls, shelters, Ntembo’s. Black plastic, sacking cloth, cardboard, rusted roofing sheets, wood, bottle tops as washes etc. Most of the materials used have actually been collected from disused shelters or from waste piles. I found this spaces immersive and beautiful which is contradictory to the purpose for which they have been built - out of necessity and not to have any aesthetic appeal.

The second installation was titled ‘Bundles’ which comprised of a few hundred individually hand stitched balls, ‘bundles’ strung together and suspended from the ceiling in divided into to groups which gather on plinths and then down into piles on the floor. This piece represents the second hand clothing market and uses completely recycled textiles and plastics.

I worked with a small group of farm worker ladies to stitch the balls. Connecting with the women through this helped me visualize and link ideas of individuality and the interconnection of people from different groups of society. Found waste material as well as personal discarded clothes and textiles were used, which added the human bodily aspect.

In ‘Scattered Belongings’ I drew from my experience and ask questions about how we deal with waste, sustainability of livelihoods by recycling and the woman’s role. Whether or not the secondhand trades alleviates poverty and helps create identities or whether the goods are just morally charged gifts encouraging a consumption culture and benefitting those higher up the vertical hierarchy.

New List Item