Textile (Textile)

Anonymous by Laura Lima consists of a series of fabric-based forms, over which rope has been arranged in varying textures and patterns. Visually, the work evades more complex descriptions, demanding a separate set of conventions to describe its semi-textural, semi-sculptural surface. Lima’s principle of demanding alternative descriptive conventions and exploring the experiential dimension of interacting with her work is fully visible in Anonymous , which is in many ways best qualified, in its sheer variety of shapes and textures, by its title.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

In 2009, Laura Henno began research in the archipelago Comoros for her first film Koropa the first episode of a triptych— completed in 2016. Mayotte is the only remaining island belonging to France in the archipelago of the Comoros, which gained independence in 1975, creating an invisible border that divides the islands from Europe. Koropa is the portrait of a particular relationship: that of Ben, a former fisherman turned smuggler, and Patron, a child who makes his first smuggling voyage between the island of Anjouan and Mayotte.

Textile (Textile)

Like most of Laura Rokas’s hand-stitched works, Once in Two Moons was made while she sat in bed, imbuing the work with a tender sense of domestic intimacy. The scene’s dominant figure is a faceless woman whose blood red, dagger-like fingernails, polka dot jacket, and jet black hair resemble a sort of avatar of the artist. The figure surveys a chaotic scene that might be described as a “cute apocalypse” (a phrase Rokas says is characteristic of her work in general).

Painting (Painting)

The impressionistic surface of Wild Money (2017) recalls the 1950s paintings of Philip Guston. Its creases recall human skin, while the filigree pattern of red skeins implies what lies beneath. The body is fully implicated in this work.

Photography (Photography)

N°001 Djoubi et sa meute is part of a series of photographs by Laura Henno titled Ge Ouryao! . This particular work depicts a young man named Djoubi posing proudly, surrounded by his pack of dogs, along the shoreline of Mayotte.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

La libertad is a “greca” film, a meander film, with no beginning nor end, weaving together fragments of daily life at the Navarro´s, counting threads and time, wondering and wandering around words as emancipation, labor, and freedom (la libertad), the word that most appeared in our conversations. The “greca”, the meander, is the main symbol weaved in the textiles made by the Navarro sisters, from Santo Tomás Jalieza, México. A geometrical form of an endless braid of diamonds, the “greca” represents corn, an entity worshiped by the pre-hispanic civilisations of Mesoamerica.