wombmate! by Mithu Sen is part of a project called AºVOID. In this fragmented mental map, the landscape is fleeting, embossed, and ethereal; there are moments of recognition and also a near-violent sudden emptying of memory. Bodies are skeletal, nature is in entropy, context is removed. Color is sparse, as if the world of vibrance is slowly being extracted, with only its shadows remaining. Composed of watercolor and graphite on paper, encased in hand-etched plexi-glass, this work plays with light, seeking shadows to disturb the surface of each work, in a challenge of an artwork’s materiality and the presence of the observer on the eventual image that is perceived. The concept of ‘home’ is in flight and barren; faith and security aflame. The bounty of new life, the ‘womb’ of nature, its flora and fauna in an extinguishing spiral where humans fight for their right to ‘reproduce’, beyond the nurture/nature debates of gender. Here the myths of human survival, the paradigms of social life and its assumptions of identity, of morality, of value, are under scrutiny. The artist refers to the works in this series as “shadow drawings”, spaces where “phantom limbs” linger, where pain is felt but not tangibly located. This work is Sen’s attempt to demythologize the self, to defy the idea that time is linear and thus mappable; playing with the farcity of certainty, of language, of sight.
Mithu Sen’s writing is central to her practice, as a poet from West Bengal, a region of great Indian literary history, poetic and visual tropes giving ground to her challenge of semiotics. Sen considers her tangible artworks, which range from drawing, installation, poetry, moving image, sculpture, and sound, as by-products of her gestural artistic practice. She believes that performance enables a radical hospitality in ethos and action that embrace all animate and inanimate life. Sen’s artist world is populated by the mythical, the fantastical and the absurd; her studio full of fictional, religious, spiritual, folk-loric characters, materials, and narratives that both challenge and alleviate her frustrations and conundrums in navigating the hegemony of capitalism and its insistence on categorizing, cataloguing, and valuing human labor (under historically destructive extractive, exploitative, often racist means). Her desire to conjure a world that resists assumptions of value according to use, visibility, and its tangible outputs demonstrates a deep empathic awareness of human experience and the limits imposed by exclusively valuing visual evidence, as matter that can be easily circulated, exchanged, and defined. Often incorporating abstracted languages that Sen refers to as “non-languages” or “lingual anarchy”, the artist revels in the undoing of meaning, in the provocation of taboo associated with sexuality, hierarchies of social agency, and presumptions of monolithic identities.
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Le jeu d’illusions grinçantes du photographe Jeff Wall, à Bâle Cet article vous est offert Pour lire gratuitement cet article réservé aux abonnés, connectez-vous Se connecter Vous n'êtes pas inscrit sur Le Monde ? Inscrivez-vous gratuitement Article réservé aux abonnés « Boy Falls From Tree » (2010), de Jeff Wall...
The Pixelated Revolution is a lecture-performance by artist Rabih Mroué about the use of mobile phones during the Syrian revolution...
Latiff Mohidin’s “Langkawi”: The Within and Beyond | ArtsEquator Thinking and Talking about Arts and Culture in Southeast Asia Articles Image: Chan + Hori Gallery July 10, 2018 By Gerald Sim (1,500 words, eight minute read) As with any thought-provoking installation, Latiff Mohidin’s “Langkawi” series, on show at Chan+Hori Contemporary , evokes a large range of perceptions from its audience...
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Kamau Amu Patton’s painting Static Field I originates from a system of electronic and digital media...
Phinthong provided 5,000 Euros to exchange for Zimbabwean dollars, the most devalued and worthless currency in the world...
Weekly Picks: Indonesia (9 - 15 July 2018) | ArtsEquator Thinking and Talking about Arts and Culture in Southeast Asia Indonesia July 9, 2018 Top Picks of Indonesia art events in Bali, Yogyakarta and Jakarta from 9 – 15 July 2018 Titian Art Space in Bali presents the exhibition Mokoh for the house of Mondo ...
Weekly Southeast Asia Radar: Why I sing in English; how Cambodian art can survive | ArtsEquator Thinking and Talking about Arts and Culture in Southeast Asia ArtsEquator Radar Nyein Su Wai Kyaw Soe | Frontier March 12, 2020 ArtsEquator’s Southeast Asia Radar features articles and posts about arts and culture in Southeast Asia, drawn from local and regional websites and publications – aggregated content from outside sources, so we are exposed to a multitude of voices in the region...