Vik
2020 - Painting (Painting)
60 x 50 cm
Ayan Farah
The painting is composed of nineteenth century linen collected over five years. The pieces started out as offcuts from a large work called Fabaceae, which refers to the carob bean, an African staple found in the rainforest and tropical forests. The artist took these already dyed offcuts and dyed them further and then put them out in the sun to fade. The indigo came from a plant she grew in London and the rust came from discarded industrial metal found in Hastings and Vinterviken in Sweden. The carob, used to fix the indigo, was collected in Essaouira, Morocco. She then cut the offcuts into strips and sewed them together on a machine. The linen was purchased in Salon de Provence from two members of the family estate. The work thus brings together linen from two different parts of the family. The two monograms in red are retained from the original. The title Vik is short for Vinterviken, meaning winter bay, the area in Stockholm where Ayan Farah made the work and where she has been living since the beginning of the year. It is the place where Alfred Nobel established a research laboratory and factory in southern Stockholm to make nitroglycerin, buying up the whole area in 1865. After 1971 it became a recreational area belonging to the city of Stockholm. The industrial materials employed by Nobel’s factories however have led to extensive soil contamination with high levels of lead and arsenic. Unusually high levels of uranium have also been detected on the bottom of the cove. By employing materials gathered from this damaged environment Farah repurposes them and ‘cleans’ them, with the blues and greys are redolent of the wintry light reflecting off the sea.
Ayan Farah spends considerable time travelling: to Israel, the Somali desert or to Sweden where her mother lives. As she travels, she collects materials to paint with such as mud from the Dead Sea, Mexican terracotta and discarded metals from industrial areas in Sweden from which she derives rust and clay. She also grows her own plants gathered from across the globe from which she makes dyes. She then dyes old linen that she cuts up and then sews together to form ‘paintings’, governed by organic processes, including the use of natural dyes or the influence of the weather that is brought to bear on her works by leaving them outside over long periods. The supports themselves often have their own histories too, for example linens brought from markets will come embroidered. Drawing and contours are achieved through seams. Her work invokes traditional Bogolan mud dying and Ashanti Kente textile art as well as Bauhaus and abstraction from the 1960s and 1970s. Her ‘paintings’ thus incorporate the past, refashioning and repurposing it; engaging with the politics of ‘poor’ materials – the offcuts of capitalist production, which are infused with both personal history and geopolitics.
Colors:
Related works sharing similar palette
© » KADIST
Laura Hyunjhee Kim for Neon Was Never Brighter: A Glimpse Into the Future For the first outdoor contemporary art festival in Chinatown, San Francisco, Neon Was Never Brighter: A Glimpse Into the Future , in collaboration with Chinatown Media & Arts Collaborative (CMAC) and curator Candace Huey, KADIST San Francisco co-presents a new performance, Cosmocrane (2022) by Laura Hyunjhee Kim...
© » KADIST
Li Xiaofei
Combined into a single two-channel HD video, Li Xiaofei’s Ponytail and Chongming Island II are silent portraits of the women assembly line workers at a Chinese kitchenware factory...
© » KADIST
Cheryl Donegan
2013Fashion is the focus of Blood Sugar , which consists of a video projected onto a vintage vinyl jacket set at torso height on a dressmaker’s dummy...
© » ANOTHER
The Story Behind Iconic 90s Images of Cameron Diaz, Heath Ledger and More | AnOther As his new exhibition opens in Milan, Michel Haddi tells us the story behind some of his most famous images of Gwyneth Paltrow, Kate Moss, Janet Jackson and more December 11, 2023 Text Gary Grimes Michel Haddi , the legendary French-Algerian fashion photographer, is a big believer in the importance of first impressions...
© » SLASH PARIS
Sinae Lee — Exposition personnelle — L'ahah Moret — Exposition — Slash Paris Connexion Newsletter Twitter Facebook Sinae Lee — Exposition personnelle — L'ahah Moret — Exposition — Slash Paris Français English Accueil Événements Artistes Lieux Magazine Vidéos Retour Sinae Lee — Exposition personnelle Exposition Vidéo À venir Sinae Lee, J’ai besoin de la chance, vue de l’installation vidéo à la biennale de la jeune création, Houilles © Marc Domage Sinae Lee Exposition personnelle Dans 8 mois : 2 → 23 mars 2024 L’ahah #Moret est heureuse d’inviter l’artiste Sinae Lee pour une exposition personnelle du 02 mars au 23 mars 2024...
© » KADIST
Martin Boyce
2003In the installation Our Love is like the Flowers, the Rain, the Sea and the Hours, Martin Boyce uses common elements from public gardens – trees, benches, trashbins– in a game which describes at once a social space and an abstract dream space...
© » KADIST
Edgar Calel
2020The point of departure for Xar – Sueño de obsidiana by Edgar Calel is a poem that the artist wrote in Maya Kaqchikel...
© » KADIST
Frequencies of Tradition at Incheon Art Platform, Curated by Hyunjin Kim With works by Sooryeon Choe, Chung Seoyoung, Yoeri Guépin, Ho Tzu Nyen, Chia Wei Hsu, siren eun young jung, Jane Jin Kaisen, Alexander Keefe + Ashoke Chatterjee & Liz Phillips, Tomoko Kikuchi, Ayoung Kim, Gala Porras-Kim, Seulgi Lee, Young Min Moon, Hwayeon Nam, Part-time Suite, Ko Sakai & Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Lieko Shiga, Simon Soon + Roger Nelson & Stella, Stephanie Spray & Pacho Velez, Erika Tan, Fiona Tan, Evelyn Taocheong Wang, Wang Tuo, Ming Wong, Yo Daham, and Zheng Guogu Frequencies of Tradition departs from an understanding of tradition as a space of contestation, where one can critically reflect on Asian modernization and pluralize our comprehension of the regional modern...
© » MODERN MET ART
Learn How to Draw Realistic Portraits in This Online Class Home / Classes / Academy Discover the Secrets of Drawing Realistic Portraits (Now on Pre-Sale!) By Jessica Stewart on December 5, 2023 Have you ever seen a realistic portrait and wished that you knew how to create something similar? Thanks to My Modern Met Academy's new course, Realistic Portrait Drawing Made Easy , you'll discover all the tips, tricks, and techniques to produce a portrait that looks incredibly real...
© » SLASH PARIS
Sinae Lee — Exposition personnelle — L'ahah Moret — Exhibition — Slash Paris Login Newsletter Twitter Facebook Sinae Lee — Exposition personnelle — L'ahah Moret — Exhibition — Slash Paris English Français Home Events Artists Venues Magazine Videos Back Sinae Lee — Exposition personnelle Exhibition Video Upcoming Sinae Lee, J’ai besoin de la chance, vue de l’installation vidéo à la biennale de la jeune création, Houilles © Marc Domage Sinae Lee Exposition personnelle In 8 months: March 2 → 23, 2024 L’ahah #Moret est heureuse d’inviter l’artiste Sinae Lee pour une exposition personnelle du 02 mars au 23 mars 2024...
© » KADIST
Wong Kit Yi
2017Artist Wong Kit Yi’s A River in the Freezer combines directed and found footage to meditate upon glacial memory, cryogenics, and frozen fiction...
© » KADIST
Halil Altindere, Carlos Amorales, Alexandre Arrechea, Yael Bartana, Rodrigo Braga, Aslan Gaisumov, Igor Grubic, Jason Hendrik Hansma, Oded Hirsch, Binelde Hyrcan, Angelica Mesiti, Deimantas Narkevicius, Jakrawal Nilthamrong, Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba, Enrique Ramírez, Chulayarnnon Siriphol, Finger Pointing Worker, Guan Xiao Munchhausen trilemma is a thought experiment used to demonstrate the impossibility of proving any truth...
© » KADIST
Zarouhie Abdalian, Rocky Cajigan, Jesse Chun, Nikita Gale, Shilpa Gupta, Baseera Khan, Tarik Kiswanson, Alexis Smith, and Cecilia Vicuña Be here, or even better, be nowhere brings together artists who employ sculpture, drawing, video, and sound to probe social and historical structures and infrastructures, such as migration, colonialism, carceral systems, and space militarization...
