The 2021 Shortlist

20 SHORTLISTED ARTISTS

This year’s shortlisted artists are dealing with themes that are ever-present in today’s world. There are works that are looking at social bias in 21st century algorithms, the climate crisis, the pandemic and beyond, as well as projects that are dealing with the European colonial past. The exhibition opens 28 May and continues until 28 September 2021 at York Art Gallery, UK. yorkartgallery.org.uk.

1Arthur Kleinjan Above Us Only Sky, Three-Channel Video | Netherlands arthurkleinjan.nl

A narrator leads us into a magical-realist history that is bereft of fabrication.

His story begins with an investigation into a plane crash in communist

Czechoslovakia, which one woman survived after an unlikely fall from the air.

This event becomes the point of entry to a dense web of seemingly unrelated events that appear to be deeply entangled – questioning the logic of chance and synchronicity. Kleinjan explores layered and evocative stories. 6Christiane Zschommler The Will of the People, Multimedia | UK christianezschommler.co.uk The images in The Will of the People are based on spectrograms of speeches by the British government, headlines in the media and the artist’s own writing where she reflects on the impact of the 2016 UK / EU referendum. Distorted facts and invented statistics – coupled with hate speech – make impossible promises to the nation, helping to create a climate of fear towards immigrants. The voices of Europeans currently living in Britain are missing.

2Gabriel Hensche Almost Heaven, Artists' Film | Germany gabrielhensche.com Gabriel Hensche’s performance, moving image and installation pieces deal with the question of how the internet and new digital technologies affect the way we coexist and "perform" for each other. In Almost Heaven, the artist asked people to perform or dance to a song that they didn’t like. The result is both surprising and unnerving; the connection between the viewer and performer is demonstrative of how we engage with videos on the internet. 7Dirk Hardy Vivarium, Photography | Netherlands dirkhardy.com Vivarium was started in 2018 as a crafted photographic microcosm. The constructed worlds depict confined spaces in which people find themselves all day. Each diorama is a hyperreal tableau: a portal into the inner-worlds of its exposed inhabitants. These deeply personal encounters are reflections of Hardy’s observations and memories – a concert of subjective narrative elements by which the artist creates a conspiracy between himself and the viewer.

3Erwin Redl Reflections V2, Installation | USA paramedia.net Reflections V2 comprises over a decade of research into the nature of visual perception. The formal representation of the work is strongly tied to the aesthetic of Minimal Art. The tradition of colour field painting is combined with slow, seasonal changes found in nature. The custom software uses generative algorithms and random processes to create a stream of colour sequences, reframing the relationship between fine art and digital media. 8Henny Burnett 365 Days of Plastic, Installation | UK axisweb.org/p/hennyburnett 365 Days of Plastic is an installation cast in pink dental plaster. It demonstrates one year’s worth of plastic food packaging from a single household, which is both simultaneously beautiful and horrifying. This is a disturbing view of one typical family’s environmental impact. Of course, the plastic was recycled, but the scale of this piece reveals the enormity of the problem. The work plays with the ambiguity of outcome and interpretation: domestic and industrial.

4Carlos David Personae II, Artists' Film | USA carlosdavid.org Personae II is an exploration of how the human spirit – as expressed through dreams, fantasy and imagination – can endure and transcend to provide perspectives on lived experiences. For this instalment, David collaborated with a diverse group of people connected through the overarching experiences of conflict and trauma. Working with stigmatised and marginalised groups, he opened up a new dialogue between the spectator and the subject. 9David Brandy Newer Topographics, Photography | Canada davidbrandy.com Brandy’s passion as an artist is to capture man-altered landscapes with the uncanny – the psychological experience of something strangely familiar. Familiar objects or places evoke a sense of being both beautiful and strange, reflecting a kind of splendour we seldom notice. In Newer Topographics a canvas is created, which emphasises a strong sense of isolation due to the juxtaposition of natural landscape with solitary manmade constructs.

5Kitoko Diva The Black Man in The Cosmos, Artists' Film | UK kitokodiva.com The Black Man in The Cosmos is a poetic and experimental art film created as a part of a video installation mixing new form of Afrofuturism, cyberspace imagery and poetry. Aiming to be both social and political by addressing the contemporary identity crisis issue amongst European Afro-descendants, this short film is revisiting Space Is the Place, the science fiction film, released in 1974, directed by John Coney, written by Sun Ra and Joshua Smith.

10Andrew Leventis Freezer Box and Refrigerator (Vanitas), Painting | USA andrewleventispainting.com Freezer Box (Vanitas) and Refrigerator (Vanitas) are from a series that considers vanitas in a modern-day circumstance, which really came to light when the pandemic hit in March 2020. The works reflect on the mass panic induced by the Covid-19 pandemic and how the idea of “stocking up” was so crucial and almost primal instinct, in a notion to survive. In the traditional sense, vanitas allude to themes of plague, desperation, dehumanisation and loss today.

1

4

6 2

7 33

5

8

11

14

16 12

17 313

15

18

11Alice Duncan Black Hole (Lake Mungo), Photography | Australia alicelduncan.com

Black Hole was created at Lake Mungo, Australia, on the traditional lands of the Barkandji / Paakantyi, Mutthi Mutthi and Ngiyampaa people. This site represents an important – yet often overlooked – natural landmark within the Australian landscape. Since the discoveries of ancient human remains in the 1960s, Lake Mungo has been the location of an ongoing and often tense dialogue between Aboriginal people and descendants of settlers.

16James Tapscott Aura Vale Column, Sculpture | Australia studio-jt.net

The representation of a familiar material – something taken for granted and even considered “ugly” – allows us to re-examine the everyday. The transformation of the material with light (and the display) renders it objectively beautiful. The mere possibility of this transformation enables all aspects of life and our interaction with the environment to be transformed too – the power of light, in this instance, is a phenomenon unto itself.

12Monica Alcazar-Duarte Second Nature, Photography | UK monicaalcazarduarte.com

Alcazar-Duarte's images are part of an ongoing project considering how algorithms are used – through search engine technology – to support and maintain biased social thinking. Second Nature is an amalgamation of stories on the subject of discrimination gathered through algorithmic search results over the course of a year. The drawings on top of the photographs suggest the structure of the internet and reference invisible structures of power.

17Niels Lyhne Løkkegaard Thermal, Installation / Sculpture | Denmark nielslyhne.com

During the first Coronavirus lockdown in March 2020, Lyhne Løkkegaard created a series of works using hand sanitiser on thermal paper. The paper – familiar to all in the form of receipts – has a chemical-covered surface that reacts with hand sanitiser. This chemical reaction was surprising and unnerving to the artist – rendering something invisible, yet visible. This has served as a reciprocal visualisation of the virus throughout the pandemic.

13Chris Combs Morale is Mandatory, Sculpture | USA chriscombs.net

Facial recognition features in Morale is Mandatory, which uses a camera to detect smiling faces. Referencing the rise of algorithmic surveillance, it incorporates Google’s “AIY Vision Kit”, which teaches children how to use facial recognition, with no mention of ethical responsibilities in its material. Morale is Mandatory alludes to technology’s power for supporting state-sponsored emotional monitoring, such as Bhutan’s “Gross National Happiness.”

18Cesar & Lois Degenerative Cultures, Installation | Brazil & USA cesarandlois.org

Cesar & Lois is an artist duo probing our relationship with nature. Degenerative Cultures is an interactive artwork in which living organisms, social networks and AI corrupt the human impulse to master nature. Within a glowing dome, micro-organisms grow across a book about humanity’s disruption of nature.

Next to this is a computer monitor, in which an intelligent digital fungus searches the internet and corrupts texts with the same predatory intent.

14Seb Agnew Syncope and Cubes, Photography | Germany seb-agnew.com

Syncope (the medical term for “fainting” or “passing out”) deals with the feeling of “being disoriented.” Time and again we lose track of what is happening around us – when we concentrate the most, we often find ourselves thinking about nothing at all. This metaphorical temporary loss of consciousness has become a daily companion for many people in our fastpaced society. This series deals with the phenomenon of disconnect.

19Shan Wu Wild Grass, Artists' Film | USA shan-wu.com

Wild Grass tells an unusual love story that is deceptive yet revealing. A woman’s struggle with her inner self plays out as she runs over and over again in an imaginary landscape – where her memory is laid over yellow wild grass. The dialogue in the film is communicated through subtitles, which is reflective of Shan Wu's experiences with North American films and media as a child in Taiwan, a time period before she spoke English fluently.

15Cathryn Shilling Metamorphosis, Sculpture | UK cathrynshilling.co.uk

Human interaction, interplay and movement are at the core of this work, which is derived from reality, performance and the infinite nuisances between them.

Often, the face that we present to the world is a mask – but the language of the body is very difficult to control. Our true nature is often revealed. Through this work, Shilling examines the relationship between glass and the human form – how material can reflect our moods and emotional experiences.

20Juliana Kasumu What Does the Water Taste Like?, Artists' Film | UK julianakasumu.co.uk What Does The Water Taste Like? engages in interpersonal speculation regarding identity production and sentiments of “home.” The film examines entanglements of “foreign” identities and the cultural mobility of knowledge throughout history. Non-linear narratives – on the subject of displacement –are part of the generational immigrant experience. Kasumu’s work presents new perspectives on the exchange of intimacy between kith and kin.

1. Arthur Kleinjan, Above Us Only Sky, video, 3 screens. Sizes variable. 2. Gabriel Hensche, Still from Almost Heaven. 3. Erwin Redl Reflections V2, LEDs, custom electronics, MDF panel, stainless steel frame, 91.4 x 91.4 x 10.2 cm. 4. Carlos David, Personae II, Ink-Jet print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag Metallic Video in 4K. 36" H x 64" W and 44" H x 29" W. 5. Kitoko Diva, Still from The Black Man in The Cosmos. 6. Christiane Zschommler, The Will Of The People 2016-2020, 120 x 120 cm . 7. Dirk Hardy, Vivarium, Sizes vary per work from 202cm x 106cm to 63cm x 83cm (including frame). 8. Henny Burnett, 365 Days of Plastic, cast dental plaster. 9. David Brandy, Newer Topographics, Digital Chromogenic prints mounted on ACP and face mounted to 1/8" plexiglass. 10. Andrew Leventis, Freezer Box (Vanitas), Oil on Linen, 91x121 cm. 11. Alice Duncan, Black Hole (Lake Mungo), Digital C-Type Print, 80 x 80 cm. 12. Monica Alcazar Duarte, Second Nature, FIVE A0 size prints / Rest A2 size prints. Photographic print on Aluminium with metallic ink drawings on top of print and applied electronics. Augmented Reality app included with 3 images. 13. Chris Combs, Morale Is Mandatory, 4x7x4" 2020. 14. Seb Agnew, Syncope, Photography, 75x50 cm or 105x75 cm. 15. Cathryn Schilling, Metamorphosis, Glass and 24 carat gold. 37 high cm x 44 cm wide x 14 deep cm. 16. James Tapscott, Aura Vale Column, 50 x 50 x 200cm. Acrylic and found water. 17. Niels Lyhne Løkkegaard, Thermal, 210 x 197, 2020. 18. Cesar & Lois, Degenerative Cultures, Custom electronics and digital fungus (AI) Refurbished, custom monitor, Plexiglass Dome, Book, Physarum polycephalum (living microorganism), Humidity and lighting system, Thermal printer, WiFi / Twitter. Installation on pedestal totaling: 2 m (w) x 1 m (d) x 1 m (h). 19. Shan Wu, Still from Wild Grass, 1920x1440 pixels, Stereo, 1.3:1. 20. Juliana Kasumu, Still from What Does the Water Taste Like?

Exhibition Reviews

1Morocco HARRY GRUYAERT

Belgian visual artist Harry Gruyaert (b. 1941) rose to prominence in the early 1970s with his “TV shots.” After documenting his native country, he journeyed off to capture the rich hues of California in the early 1980s, at which point he joined the prestigious list of Magnum photographers. This exhibition's focus on Morocco draws on almost 40 years of trips to the country. The prints are eye-catching, but the slideshow at the back will keep you spellbound for an hour. There isn’t a single boring slide and masterpieces abound.

Unlike previous humanist photographers like Henri CartierBresson, Gruyaert explores every aspect of the countries he documents, from populous urban streets to figureless landscapes. One noticeably absent feature in Morocco are indoor scenes: ever discreet, Gruyaert also unobtrusively avoids close-ups. Only very rarely do any of his photographs seem staged. One noticeable exception is a 1976 shot called Erfoud in which figures seem carved out of the wall face.

You can see why Gruyaert discovered the virtues of colour photography in Morocco: his lens depicts the ochre gorgeousness of the light on the granular façades of old buildings, the arresting vividness of North African clothing, the pastel hues of wrinkled mountainous landscapes.

There is a clear tendency towards dramatic chiaroscuro: figures engulfed in shadow, faces darkened to the point of obfuscation. Many of Gruyaert’s images push figurativeness in the direction of abstraction. It's sometimes difficult to discern body parts in the hunched human sculptures. The landscapes, too, draw us into reverie by dint of their near-abstract configurations. One render of the Atlas Mountains is dreamily pigmented; the water seems silky, the sand made of velvet. Words Erik Martiny

Magnum Gallery, Paris 30 January - 2 April

magnumphotos.com

2But Still, It Turns EIGHT PHOTOGRAPHIC PROJECTS

ICP New York brings together eight diverse projects from nine contemporary artists in But Still, It Turns. The images span a range of styles and content, unified by the context of the last two decades. The photos are also bound by the definition of being “photographs from the world” – offering an alternative to the fast-paced moments of modern living. Life is captured as it is unfolds in a layered view.

Curran Hatleberg’s Lost Coast scenes are vivid with nuances that tell communities’ stories. Meanwhile, images in Gregory Halpern’s road trip ZZYZX and Kristine Potter’s Manifest unveil poignant visuals, combining character-sketch portraiture and landscape views of western locales. In one of Halpern's images, a hand stretches towards the sun.

Cultural examinations are at the centre of RaMell Ross’s South County, AL (a Hale County) and Piergiorgio Casotti and Emanuele Brutti’s collaborative project, Index G, represents the faces and places that give our worlds meaning.

Richard Choi’s What Remains tackles the subject of memory in a hybrid of video and still images. Vanessa Winship’s She Dances on Jackson and Stanley Wolukau-Wanambwa’s All My Gone Life also pay homage to familiar objects and landscapes, as history is woven into the everyday.

But Still, It Turns offers a collection of images which allow quiet moments to transpire, settling into the depths of minutae and revelling in the puzzle pieces that make up our daily lives. “These are photographers who go out into the world and engage with life as it is,” says curator Paul Graham. “There is no Hollywood staging or production crews. The exhibition revitalises and reminds us of one of things photography does best – engaging with the flow of life.” Words Jenn Sauer

ICP, New York 4 February - 9 May

icp.org

3Field Test JACKIE NICKERSON

More than two decades ago, Jackie Nickerson began her art practice photographing Zimbabwean farm workers, and sharing their remarkable stories. In her latest body of work, Field Test, anonymity is the focus of portrait-esque photos, containing masked and shielded faces, figures and scenes.

Inspired by Nickerson's time in Libya during the Ebola epidemic of 2014, the series began in a time that mirrors our current experience of Covid. Nickerson sought to humanise the collective, invisible trauma. Without age, gender or race as markers, these figures become anyone and everyone.

Works such as Wrapped and Chimera I offer only the outlines of bodies, whilst other images rely on the subtleties of body language for any kind of emotional expression, such as the head tilt in Red Net or hands raised to cover a veiled face in Paint. The degrees of transparency suggest complex layers of freedom and authenticity at play – we, as viewers, are looking for markers of feeling and information.

As an artist interested in politics, Nickerson feels that these pieces provide an opportunity for societal reflection – looking for a better path and mode of living together. She comments: “I have been very concerned with human rights and the human condition. We have to figure out a new way of thinking. We have to take responsibility for our own actions and accept our civil duty to step forward.”

A meaningful take on Nickerson’s plastic and mesh-encased “made worlds” is through consumerism and technology. The images might speak to a feeling of loss for the more organic aspects of life as we have previously known it, or the physical detriment of synthetic manufacture. Nickerson decidedly leaves the themes to be chosen by the viewer. Words Jenn Sauer

Jack Shainman, New York 25 February - 3 April

2a 1

3

5a 4

6

4Tatter, Bristle and Mend SONYA CLARK

Sonya Clark (b. 1967) created BREATHE in 1994, 20 years before Eric Garner repeatedly uttered “I can’t breathe” whilst being choked by New York police and his last words became intrinsic to the Black Lives Matter movement. Both life and death inhabit this handheld mirror featuring a filling of mica, a reflective substance used in ancient Egypt some 5,000 years ago, and a handle wrapped like a mummy.

Found objects abound in this first survey of the 25-year career of an artist who speaks of, or in, what she calls “the language of textiles, the politics of hair.” This celebration of

Black culture redresses the injustices and imbalances that have prevailed through the centuries via the dark legacy of slavery. Chief among Clark’s favoured humble materials are ubiquitous US-made black plastic combs, stamped “unbreakable” and yet useless for textured hair.

Clark subjects these combs to all sorts of transformations in intricate sculptures, adorned with thread, serving as support for tapestry portraits of hairdressers, snipped or defanged. In Iterations (2008), what begins as a makeshift family tree fans out on the floor into layers of hundreds of combs, representing how slavery prevents many African Americans from tracing their lineage past several generations.

In replacing the traditional white horsehair of a violin bow with a dreadlock, stringing necklaces with “pearls” of hair or stitching cornrows and Bantu knots onto fabrics with black thread, Clark reaffirms a Black presence in realms where it has been omitted. Paradoxes permeate this fraught fragility, but also mirror the greatest contradiction of them all: the ideal of American equality and justice against historic enslavement and subjugation. The artist dubs this duality “the warp and weft of our nation.” After months of delay, the show coincides with global reckoning over endemic racism. Words Olivia Hampton

NMWA, Washington DC 3 March - 31 May

nmwa.org

5Foam Talent NEW PHOTOGRAPHIC TALENT

Foam’s yearly open call has been on the radar of international photographers for more than a decade. The 2020 edition gathers 19 young artists from across the world. Their works are now on show in a travelling exhibition and are published in The Talent issue of Foam’s magazine. Also grouped in a brand new digital platform, which represents a new kind of exhibition space, resource material and a meeting point, the diverse series address the role of the portrait in visual culture today. Individuals and communities who are usually invisible or on the fringes of society are in the spotlight here – in a mix of both private and public spheres. Reality, fiction and identity are called into question.

Italian-Senegalese photographer Adji Dieye (b. 1991) examines how we look at the so-called “other” – and how we examine someone else’s space, whether literally or metaphorically. Her style is characterised by simplification, condensation and replication, as with branding and advertising, she reinvents the African tradition of studio portrait photography.

The artist reflects on the imaginary narrative of Western Africa, as sold to foreigners, questioning existing artistic models of representation. Has the art market been able to transmit correctly African’s aesthetics, or African artists posed for the market? Whilst challenging the external interpretation, she denounces also inner stereotypes and traditional roles determined by economical superstructures.

Dieye uses the popular stock cube by Swiss brand Maggi as metaphor of the impact of global, imperialist trade on contemporary African nations’ identities with the series Maggic Cube. The dehydrated broth, invented in Europe, is one of the goods that replaced local ingredients, creating an unnecessary demand and giving shape to a branded landscape. Dieye critiques capitalism and consumerism, mainly through a pantomime of female subjects portrayed as domestic figures, as they are major victims of branding strategies. Words Monica de Vidi

Foam Amsterdam 18 December - 2 June

foam.org

6Seeing Differently A CENTENNIAL EXHIBITION

The Phillips Collection was founded by Duncan Phillips as a memorial to his father, who died in 1917, and to his brother, who succumbed a year later during the influenza pandemic. The museum has much to teach us in its centennial year, as the world grapples with another health crisis.

A narrative of social justice – bridging national, racial and gender divides – unites some 200 works drawn from an everevolving collection 30 times as large. Solo exhibitions devoted to African American artists are also planned.

Cast shadows breathe life into a large portrait of a girl composed of a floating wooden mosaic by Congolese artist Aimé Mpane (b. 1968) dubbed Maman calcule (2013; “Mother Calculates”) at the centre of a section on the multi-layered aspects of identity. The narrative, developed by an interdisciplinary group of community members whose voices appear on wall texts, breaks down the biases highlighted by the latest wave of racial violence and the inequities laid bare by the pandemic. Take Self Portrait as Henry Box Brown (Proto) (2012), part of a project in which Wilmer Wilson IV (b. 1989) covered himself with postage stamps and walked into post offices across Washington asking to be mailed to freedom. The formerly enslaved Brown got shipped from Virginia to Pennsylvania in a box just over 150 years ago, in 1849.

This is a place where Washington native Joseph Holston’s (b. 1944) Charity (1976), which depicts an elderly Black woman caught mid-thought, holds court with the woodcut, silkscreen and aquatint trio of portraits Brisk Day (1990) by Alex Katz (b. 1927). The museum’s trailblazing holdings allow Bernhard Hildebrandt’s (b. 1954) painterly photograph Peter 4 (2013) to be flanked by its subject – El Greco’s The Repentant St. Peter – and Francisco Goya’s portlier version of the saint who holds the keys to heaven. It’s part of a healing salve for the gaping societal wounds highlighted by recent upheavals and tumults experienced across the globe. Words Olivia Hampton

Phillips Collection, Washington DC 6 March - 12 September

Spotlight on New Talent

5 WOMEN DIRECTORS TO WATCH

Over its 10-year life span, the Aesthetica Short Film Festival (ASFF) has debuted emerging talent across all forms of filmmaking, from virtual reality to short documentaries, comedies, dance and fashion through to narratives features. In the same decade, significant changes have begun stirring in the way that the film industry treats women. Female voices in film are now more vital than ever before, and are slowly on the rise, with women representing 16% of directors working on the 100 highest-grossing films in 2020 (up from 12% in 2019), and 21% making up roles behind the scenes.

Some of the most promising and intuitive of those voices have found a festival home in ASFF, showcasing work that has invariably gone on to reach high praise. British-Iranian filmmaker Maryam Mohajer won the BAFTA for Best Animated Short in 2020 for Grandad Was a Romantic after the film played at ASFF, whilst Sasha Rainbow’s touching short documentary Kamali – which played as one of two films from the director in ASFF 2019 – was also nominated. Longstanding relationships with female filmmakers have been part of ASFF's driving force, like Alice Seabright, who has won multiple awards including Best Comedy with Sex Ed. She now works on Netflix’s vastly popular teen show Sex Education.

New names at the festival are also making big strides in terms of bringing new perspectives to the screen. Non-fiction filmmaker Jessica Bishopp is carving a significant career for herself as a visually assertive storyteller. Her ASFF-selected Pampas is about Britain’s legacy of middle class suburban swingers. In genre filmmaking, Nosa Eke is fast becoming a woman to watch. “I got into filmmaking because I rarely saw any queer black people star in the shows that I liked, but there were in web series” Eke explains. “Those web-series taught me that you didn’t have to wait for broadcasters to back you in order to make something brilliant.”

Eke’s short film Something in the Closet – a thematic horror about a queer teen struggling with her sexuality – played at ASFF’s virtual edition in 2020. “Having Something in the Closet screen at ASFF was an honour, as it’s such a renowned film festival. It's a place where industry and filmmakers are informed about emerging talent and bold storytelling.”

The festival’s female spotlight in-part draws its strength from its partners, which are unified in their commitment to parity in the industry. Bird’s Eye View is a longstanding champion of women in film, thanks in part to its Reclaim the Frame initiative, which brings audiences to new female films and has been integral to ASFF’s curation, not just in films but the pioneering women such as Andrea Arnold and Sarah Gavron who have delivered industry masterclasses.

The strive for equality in filmmaking may still be on the horizon, but with this community of rising voices growing louder and larger by the day, we may be closer than we think. “The strive for finding equality in filmmaking may still be a concept firmly on the horizon, but with this community of rising voices growing louder and larger by the day, we may be closer than we think.”

Words Beth Webb

Watch work from some of the most auspicious female filmmakers today on ASFF’s Film Library: asff.co.uk/ asff-2020-film-library

The Hybrid Festival

THE FUTURE OF THE EVENT LANDSCAPE

If the past year has illustrated anything, it’s just how adaptable the film industry can be in the face of a crisis. Theatrical releases may be on hold, but for those craving the best in new filmmaking, festivals have pivoted to new, accessible online and hybrid formats, and in turn, continue to deliver carefully curated programmes to tide us over.

The scale of such online and hybrid festivals varies greatly. National festivals such as the Aesthetica Film Festival – which usually storms the streets of York – Galway Film Fleadh and Cardiff’s prestigious LGBT+ Iris Prize festival all championed emerging talent with tailored digital programmes. Internationally, Toronto International Festival, Sundance, and recently the Berlinale, brought their 2020 and 2021 events to small screens across the world. TIFF, which was forced to make staff cuts due to the pandemic, delivered a slimmed down but influential programme, which included awards hopefuls like Chloé Zhao’s Nomadland and Francis Lee’s Ammonite. “People needed us to have this event. They wanted a platform for the films,” explained the festival’s cohead Joana Vicente. “They wanted some hope.”

The jump to online worked hugely in favour of Sundance, which garnered 600,000 audience views, the most in the festival’s four-decade history. It’s VR strand New Frontier enjoyed a particularly large bump in popularity, with a jump from 2,000 to 39,869 participants in the event. “We talked about this year’s festival as a grand experiment” Festival

Director Tabitha Jackson notes: “Now we are in the process of analysing the results – a vital part of informing the expression of the Festival in 2022.” London Film Festival (LFF) – which executed a hybrid programme of events in October 2020 – also boasted record attendance of 315,000.

LFF is a fine example of how digital festivals are creating better accessibility on a regional level. Festival partners like

Watershed cinema in Bristol and Glasgow Film Theatre reported that the majority of their LFF screenings sold out. “The opportunity to be a partner venue reinforced our view that co-operation is the best way forward for audiences,” CEO of

Glasgow Film Allison Gardner told Screen International.

Though the environmental impact of streaming films and events across the internet to these record-breaking quantities of viewers must be considered, the absence of international travel for delegates and filmmakers, and energy used to power festival venues (not to mention the reduced cost) can also only be seen as a positive for the online format.

The question now is whether these advantages are enough to persuade festivals to continue digitally or in a hybrid format. Whereas purists will forever commit to the live experience of festivals, in many cases digital editions have surpassed the expectations of organisers, sponsors and partners alike. Maybe it’s time to blur the lines a little more. “Whereas purists will forever commit to the live experience of festivals, in many cases digital editions have surpassed the expectations of organisers, sponsors and partners alike. Maybe it's time to the blur the lines a little more.”

Words Beth Webb

The 11th edition of ASFF is open for entries until 31 May

asff.co.uk/submit

American Nostalgia

GLÜME

Glüme, aka Los Angeles native Molly Keck, describes herself as a “Walmart Marilyn.” She’s not the first female pop artist to reimagine yesteryear Hollywood glamour for the digital age;

Lana Del Rey’s “Gangster Nancy Sinatra” locked that game down a decade ago, reconfiguring modern pop landscape forevermore. And like Del Rey, Keck has both the voice and the vision to match that blonde ambition.

Glüme’s carefully curated aesthetic is thrillingly out-oftime; in a sea of spray-tanned, hyper-contoured, Instagram hotties, she’s almost spectral in comparison: a pale, dolleyed, B-movie starlet framed by a halo of peroxide curls, all vintage red lips and peter pan collars. Glüme’s penchant for satin babydoll dresses and ballet pumps may nod to

Courtney Love, but Keck’s no Fender slinger; Glüme trades in e-number loaded electro pop, sweet and corrosive.

You’re more likely to find her turning out a nimble Ginger

Rodgers-style tap routine, as evidenced in the video for her brilliantly addictive single, Get Low, a pulsing, buzzsaw electro paean to the restorative powers of the dancefloor. Get Low is about “the high of falling for someone and how it effects your brain chemistry and nervous system,” says Keck. “With autonomic dysfunction and a heart condition [Keck suffers from a type of angina, or coronary artery spasm that goes by the name of Prinzmetal], it makes the love ride feel like a roller coaster. I get down even trying to let myself fall for someone. So, I try not to. But I’m not very successful.”

The exquisite inevitability of romance – its charms and its perils – is a through-line on her debut. The Internet [Italians

Do It Better, 30 April] is an electropop fever dream, all candyfloss confections laced with lush, Diazepam-dreamy vocals. There’s an artful air of sepia-tinged melancholy on songs like Arthur Miller, a familiar wistfulness in the grandeur of the swirling, film score strings on Chemicals. Everything seems suffused, haunted even, with an air of emotional precarity, the highs potentially just as volatile as the lows.

Keck makes it all sound intoxicating, dynamic, thrilling.

Hers is a world of glitter and grime; of crushed velvet and pills; of tragic trysts with sharp shooters toting blank guns. “I say what I want/boys do it all the time,” she deadpans on Blossom, a knife-sharp statement of intent delivered in a Monroe pout. She’s an inventive, searing and aspiring individual with dreams and ambition (“I want it all”), neon in the veins and a stash of money in her mattress. “Which god do you pray to?” she asks. “Which song do you break to?” She’s full throttle, Mary Janes pressed to the pedal.

This is an accomplished and intriguing debut, from a very promising newcomer. Keck not only understands the allure of American nostalgia, but manages to inhabit it, artfully, a glitching, tap-dancing, out-of-time starlet beaming swoonworthy voice notes over exquisitely modern dance cuts. “Keck not only understands the allure of American nostalgia, but manages to inhabit it, artfully, a glitching, tap-dancing, out-oftime starlet beaming swoon-worthy voice notes over exquisitely modern dance cuts.”

Words Charlotte R-A

NOGA EREZ

Noga Erez’s life changed “completely” with the release of her 2017 debut, Off The Radar. The bold, defiant and politically charged EDM offered up by Erez and her life / musical partner, Ori Rousso, earned her acclaim both at home, in Israel. “Music became my entire life, and things I’ve been dreaming of and working towards since a young age started happening for me,” explains Erez, from her apartment in Tel Aviv.

However, it wasn’t all rising-star glory for the Tel Avivbased artist; just as things began to accelerate for the pair, Rousso lost his mother to cancer. It was a loss that saturated the follow-up album the duo had been writing on the road. “I watched [Ori] and his family go through this experience. And at first that was all we wrote about; there was a lot to process, and it helped us to communicate [it all]. Later on, we started writing about other things. But things didn’t really get back to normal. A whole new perspective took place.”

Erez found herself confronting her own mortality, and, along with it, the generational bonds that tie progeny to parent. “Kids is an album about humans, and how we were all once somebody’s children. It’s an empathetic and forgiving look at humanity. I needed those things in order to put aside a lot of anger that I had about the world.”

This anger was palpable on Off The Radar, a record that levelled its laser gaze at everything from surveillance states and the media machine to rape culture and social media. Erez, however, was quick to state that whilst her music might be described as politicised, she’s not a “political artist” per se. Is that still the case in 2021? “Yes, that’s still true. I don’t speak about politics – I really know nothing about them. I talk about people. I’m just Noga – a human and an artist.”

It is a surprisingly neutral stance coming from an artist who’s been so vocal on the politics in the past. Previous press interviews revealed an Israeli citizen at odds with her government, whilst singles like Dance While You Shoot hinted at an artist concerned with the violence of occupation. Kids, whilst sonically ambitious and evolved, feels vague in comparison, even pessimistic in places (“peace is dead now, rest in peace”).

If Erez is more cautious with her words four years on, it’s understandable. In 2019, she fell foul of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, who’d mounted a boycott of InDnegev, an Israeli music festival held in the Naqab (Negev) desert. The Naqab is occupied land, home to an indigenous Palestinian Bedouin population who, critics say, hold Israeli citizenship but lack basic rights and protections. Erez remained on the line-up, despite calls to quit.

Kids doesn’t deign to offer any answers, easy or otherwise. Nevertheless, Erez is proud. This new album is the product of growth and experience, she says. “Our vision is bigger, our perspective is wider, but everything goes through a much more precise filter. We are more patient, we listen more.” “A sense of anger was palpable on Off the Radar, a record that levelled its lazer gaze on everything from surveillance states and the media machine to rape culture and social media.”

Words Charlotte R-A

nogaerez.com

A Lavish Compendium

BLUE VIOLET

Blue Violet is dedicated to Cig Harvey’s friend Mary, who was diagnosed with leukaemia in 2017. Stuck in a sterile room devoid of all sensory joy, with “all the surfaces Purelled” and any food “scorched within an inch of its life to kill the germs”,

Harvey would send her friend photographs that she’d taken of the outside world. The result is a vibrant meditation of flora and sensory abundance, shocks of colour bursting from zinnias, marigolds, morning glories, and sunflowers that jump out of the screen, bringing life into her aseptic surroundings.

The Maine-based photographer’s fourth book is her first foray into the lively world of botanicals, which Harvey uses as a way to interrogate themes of life and death. “There is a precedence for being drawn to colour and nature when dying or surrounded by death,” she says. Like a sensory feast, the images come at you full bleed (as opposed to square format), a high-resolution amalgamation of colours and textures made to elicit strong tactile responses in the viewer. “I’m using the frame in a different way,” she explains. “These images have been about a cacophony of nature, colour, smell, taste. So, I’m filling the frame, having images coming out at the viewer in a more energetic way, in a more feverish way, which is how I felt at the time: this desperate feeling to live, to feel and experience through all of the senses.”

There’s a tension between the organic and artificial in many of the works. Bright red flowers poke their heads out a brown paper bag; burnt orange curtains illuminate the silhouettes of plants in fiery sunset tones; a bouquet of poppies float idly against a black backdrop. In a surreal, metaphysical take on objects and their function, a rose bush blooms wildly inside a car as seen through the rear-view mirror, whilst the book’s final image, a compost heap topped with colourful dahlias, is a sombre yet beautiful contemplation of nature and its life cycle. Harvey agrees: “It tugs at my heart, it’s hauntingly beautiful though it feels like a grave.”

The book invites the reader to pause, laugh, create, and become more aware of the organic world through a series of prose, poetry, recipes and illustrations, as with her previous three titles – You Look At Me Like An Emergency, Gardening at Night, and You an Orchestra You a Bomb. Instructions on how to make dandelion sandwiches are interspersed with fun facts on how “angel trumpets smell like sex” or that the Ottoman Turks invented floriography, the secret language of flowers. Diary entries and poems are punctuated with strange, whimsical orders like, “Go out and cram a fist full of wildflowers into your mouth” – giving the book playful immediacy.

During this challenging time, where lives are lost and monotony reigns supreme, Blue Violet beckons us to look at the beauty around us. Through lush imagery, Harvey’s compositions are a fierce reminder that there’s joy to be found in the small details surrounding us, blink and you’ll miss them. “Blue Violet beckons us to look at the beauty around us. Through lush imagery, Harvey's compositions are a fierce reminder that there's joy to be found in the small details surrounding us: blink and you'll miss them.”

Words Gunseli Yalcinkaya

Blue Violet is published by Monacelli

CONNECTION: CCY ARCHITECTS

Aspen-based CCY Architects are known for bringing fresh and creative ideas to built environments, from buildings in an avalanche path to a house wrapped in music. The awardwinning firm takes a holistic approach when considering each new project, combining an area’s natural surroundings – its topography – to boundary-pushing results.

For its debut monograph, the firm looks back on half a century of work through a series of 10 recently completed residential projects located through the Rocky Mountain region that showcase a tried and tested method. “Producing this publication highlighted some of the through-lines that exist in our body of work, including the connectedness between architecture and environment. It also illustrated a progression of ideas that might have otherwise gone unnoticed,” explains John Cottle, principal at CCY Architects.

The Chopin-inspired Music Box (2018), for example, is a modern guesthouse that sits next to an 1880s Victorian home in Aspen. Designed to accommodate music recitals, the project features a perforated scrim that wraps three faces of the structure like sheet music. The pattern is derived from Chopin’s Nocturne in E-Flat Major, Op. 9, No. 2, a favourite piece of the client – an aesthetically pleasing design that doubles as a practical means to filter out unwanted alley views and harsh, piercing light. “The building is a direct response to our client’s way of living, and aesthetics are a part of that,” adds Alex Klumb, another of the principles.

Castle Creek takes a similarly unorthodox approach. Nestled into a high alpine meadow surrounded, the site falls on a minor avalanche path, prompting CCY Architects to build large steel columns and thick structural walls for protection, whilst a butterfly roof expands the space for ample light. Elsewhere, the stunning Bridge House is located in a lush forest. A challenge was presented with the need to accommodate gable roofs, whilst protecting the trees and creating a “steel and glass pavilion” to house the owner’s extensive art collection. To accomplish this, CCY architects situated the living and dining areas in a transparent bridge spanning between two anchoring masses, preserving the natural drainage patterns and allowing the forest floor to flow underneath.

Despite differences in scale, location and intention, all the houses in the book are united by a respect for the environment and the desire to forge new dialogues. By asking what a changing habitat should feel like – look like – CCY Architects highlights the importance of experiencing a space through the senses and making a house a home. “Connecting buildings to their site is one of our core values and an approach that threads its way through all our work,” explains Klumb. “By approaching architecture this way, buildings can perform better as a function of sustainable design, they better reflect cultural context, and be profoundly more meaningful.” “All the houses in the book are united by a respect for the environment and the desire to forge new dialogues. By asking what a changing habitat should feel like – look like –CCY highlights the importance of making a house a home.”

Words Gunseli Yalcinkaya

Connection: CCY Architects is published by Monacelli

monacellipress.com

1The Reason I Jump JERRY ROTHWELL

Jerry Rothwell’s prize-winning documentary is less an outsider account of autism than it is an attempt to place the viewer inside the minds of those born this way. The title is taken from Naoki Higashida’s book, written when he was just 13. The young autistic Japanese author was able to communicate what it was like to have the condition, bringing a unique perspective to his readers.

Narrated by Jordan O’Donegan, extracts are used as a skeleton for the film to be built around, as Rothwell travels across the globe, and meets five subjects in four countries. Higashida’s passages unerringly explain what it’s like to be autistic: frustrations with communication, repetition, memory and time. “Inside my head,” we learn, “there isn’t really such a big difference between what I was told just now and what I heard a long, long time ago.”

Amongst the subjects are Amrit in India, who demonstrates huge artistic talent; best friends Ben and Emma in America, who have learnt to punch out sentences one letter at a time by gesturing to a letterboard; and Jestina, whose parents in Sierra Leone are looking to establish the country’s first school for autistic children. British lad Joss, whose mother and father (Jeremy Dear and Stevie Lee, the film’s producers) reluctantly, painfully, place him in the confines of a residential school.

Cloud Atlas novelist David Mitchell – who co-translated Higashida’s The Reason I Jump and has an autistic son – also appears on camera, and like so many in this caring and compassionate film, conveys with great dignity the pain he feels. As Dear says of Joss: “One of the things I would love to be is just inside his head, just for 10 seconds, to understand how he sees the world.” This film will surely help so many others to achieve just that. Words James Mottram

player.bfi.org.uk

2White Colour Black JOSEPH A. ADESUNLOYE

The long-delayed feature debut from Joseph A. Adesunloye is quiet and contemplative. It follows a young man of mixed heritage reconnecting with his family, reconciling modern sensibilities with long-standing traditions.

Leke, who is played by boxer-turned-actor Dudley O’Shaughnessy, is a successful photographer living in London – on the cusp of a big career break. Just before this, he is called home to Senegal to attend his father’s funeral. From the little information available, it’s apparent that Leke’s relationship with his father – also a photographer – is distant at best; he refuses to answer calls, instead listening to brief answerphone messages, until the news of the death finally pushes him to return home.

Once in Senegal, Leke begins to physically and mentally reconnect with the land, through rituals of labour and remembrance. Much of the early disentanglement of a complex past comes through images; Leke’s preference for digital photographs clashes with his father’s analogue techniques, however, in developing each piece, he has left something physical behind for Leke to dismantle and study. That the two have a disparate approach to the same art form is no surprise, and this highlights Leke’s feelings of alienation and distance to the home country – he has nothing concrete with which to connect.

The often-oblique nature of White Colour Black could be interpreted as subjective commentary on the failings of male stoicism – the societal expectation for men to hide vulnerability creates distance between father and son. However, the film’s insistence on silence mostly feels alienating, and whilst O’Shaughnessy’s naturalistic approach makes him an intriguing presence, the emotional release in his journey can be easily missed. Words Stephanie Watts

peccapics.com

3After Love ALEEM KHAN

After Love is a striking debut from British-born director Aleem Khan. It begins as Mary Hussein (Joanna Scanlan) returns with her husband, Ahmed, to their home in Dover. Moments later, he collapses and dies. Yet this is just the first shock that Mary must endure. After burying Ahmed, she discovers that he had a French mistress, Genevieve (Nathalie Richard), who lives in Calais.

Compelled to meet her, Mary journeys over the English Channel. Genevieve, who is in the process of moving to another house, confuses her for a cleaner and, before long, Mary begins working for her late husband’s lover in a sinister twist. It’s a contrivance but a forgivable one, given that it allows the grief-stricken widow to discover more about the double life which her spouse led.

Having converted to Islam to marry Ahmed, Mary never had children – so it comes as an even bigger jolt to discover he had a son, Solomon (Talid Ariss), with Genevieve. Khan ensures other characters harbour secrets too – the teenage Solomon, who desperately yearns for a father-figure in his life, has issues of his own.

Khan teeters the film away from realism just the right amount. At one point, Mary visualises the white cliffs of Dover land-sliding; in another scene, as she’s lying on a bed, the ceiling cracks and plaster specks land on her pillow. The message is clear: her world is collapsing. Scanlan, best known for BBC political satire The Thick of It, is superb throughout a draining and exposing role.

Probing cultural assimilation, After Love is an unusual addition to the canon of recent films exploring the British-Muslim experience (see Mogul Mowgli, Blinded by the Light). Pregnant with rich ideas, it remains absorbing, right up until the final catharsis-laden scenes. Words James Mottram

1Self-Titled STURLE DAGSLAND

Norwegian genre-bending artist Sturle Dagsland violently launches his debut album at every single one of our senses, and genuinely shocks the listener into submission from the get-go. Highly creepy and intimately testing, the on-the-nose titled Album is one that demands your attention and doesn't let go for one second.

The record feels like an art project heading headfirst into a blender – with horror core and screamo there is a lot going on here. The strange and beautiful pitchedup vocals would be jarring if they weren’t juxtaposed carefully with such beautifully composed music. In many ways, it feels like a brutal soundscape for a demented Zack Snyder action flick, forcefully melded together with a pitched and chopped-up Björk. By no means is this a uniformly enjoyable listen, but it is equally an interesting and perplexing one. When Waif arrives in the middle of the album opening with angelic vocals like a tonic amidst the intensity, it is a welcome break.

On cue, serene vocals reverse and contort beyond recognition into a nightmarish landscape of unexpected textures. And a feverish bad dream is what continues throughout, one softened by rich instrumentation that even becomes poppy at points, as on Hulter Smulter, which feels almost like it could be an Enter Shikari record.

Followed closely by Frenzy which is nothing short of an intricately detailed audio assault, deeply unsettling and captivating in equal measure. Wandering Minstrel drops in healing chords with truly emotive and meandering moments of self-reflection, which make the return of the screams even more unsettling. It is undoubtedly a unique listening and viewing experience, and a deep dive into originality – albeit at times, hair-raising one. Words Kyle Bryony

Self-Released sturledagsland.bandcamp.com

2I Am The Prophet LADY DAN

I Am The Prophet is the debut album from Lady Dan, the project of Austin-based singer-songwriter Tyler Dozier. Framed in biblical imagery and country flavoured melodies, the record feels like the mid-point of sorrow and joy. Dozier grew up in a strictly religious environment, having been born in Dothan, Alabama, and moved to Birmingham in her early 20s during which time she began to question the role of the church whilst dealing with the recent death of her father and its emotional ramifications. Album opener Paradox is confidently melodic with Dozier’s velvet vocal sheen setting down a marker for what is to follow. On the rugged Dogs, her voice glides and climbs anthemically before giving way to a descending bassline that takes the track in a sonically altered direction. Of the more reflective tracks, the plaintive Plagiarist’s Blues is stripped down to its finest, allowing a pristine vocal to rise above the strummed acoustic backdrop. The sprawling title track reflects on the resentment that comes with the modern dating era: getting to know someone and the other party backing out just when things are about to progress.

After this dissociative sense of hypnotic reflection, the listener continues to be met with the same sense of rebirth and renewal with Dozier’s voice moving between hushed and spoken to dynamic and bold. Album closer Left Handed Lover has an aura of happiness in its instrumentation yet the vocal melancholy posits that “time keeps on slipping into the future.” It begins gently and ends with a slow fade to silence, perfectly closing the circle of the song and indeed the entire album.

Overall, this is a collection of songs that is lush and cinematic, the perfect marriage of plaintive and longing. Words Matt Swain

Earth Libraries ladydanmusic.com

3Polydans ROOSEVELT

From the opening fast-paced drums it is clear that the latest offering from German singer-songwriter Marius Lauber – better known as Roosevelt – is going to be a powerful one. Huge power pop ballads mix with swaths of big choruses and feel-good energy. Every song feels like a caffeinated hit. Feels Right echoes of classic Jungle with a ricketing bassline and deep, rich synth lines all paired with Lauber’s understated but emotive vocal delivery.

There is a pervading sense of nostalgia underneath the positive vibes which makes the whole sound pulse with authenticity and originality – with a wavy, Balearic pace. Analogue stabs and big drop moments are worthy of evoking festival madness – Disclosure-esque – despite feeling also like a bygone era. Strangers opens with rattles of piano chord sounds of Baby D but with the beautiful additional vintage sounding, pained lyrics you’d expect from high-strung and saturated pop.

The Blade Runner-esque Montjuic is a twisted stand out despite it appearing only momentarily and completely without vocals. However, the textural journey of this dance-pop album still somehow manages to have a very cinematic narrative. Forget is a tense guitar bop with similar chords to Thriller, something which is very welcome.

Echoes hits all the right notes of a disco George Michael club remix, belonging firmly and confidently in the late 1980s on a dance floor complete with twinkling lights and big hair. Meanwhile, the more sombre album-closer Sign still repeats the four-to-the-floor drum beat albeit in a more reflective head-nodding fashion.

At 10 songs deep, this euphoric – and at times deliriously produced – album is a wild ride, but ultimately, it is one worth the adventure for the listener. Words Kyle Bryony

“When I enter a museum, I want a cup of tea.” Louis Kahn, architect of the Kimbell Art Museum, knew that designing a museum meant getting one’s priorities straight. Charles

Saumarez Smith acknowledges it wasn’t always this way.

Like a museum, Smith’s new title marches us along a timeline of case studies. Drastically transformed from the 19th century, Smith argues that museum architecture has been shaped for the tastes and appetites of modern audiences. Out with the porticos, the colonnades, the temple-like shrines to the past. In with the baristas, the school groups and the art spaces of the future.

Of course, not everyone agrees on the way forward.

Smith, a former Director of the National Portrait Gallery, understands better than most the tug of war between the “high priests of art” who commission, design and fund museums. (He opened the new Ondatjee Wing to critical acclaim in 2013.) The jibe instead is Dillon Ripley’s at art mogul and fellow trustee Paul Mellon at the National Gallery, Washington, in the late 1960s.

Smith is less concerned than Ripley by rich and powerful gatekeepers (“it is inescapable”). He argues that philanthropists like Paul Sachs, of Goldman Sachs, helped usher in the avant-garde. Moreover, that he needn’t make a moral judgement of the “robber barons” who want to use art “to buy their way into heaven” to respect their contribution to public collections.

Smith’s conclusion cautioning us against intensified suspicion of museum donors’ private wealth is unconvincing. Perhaps he’s not so far off former V&A Director Eric Maclagan, who he quotes describing the public “as a noun of three letters beginning with A and ending with S.” If people want tea with their Bruegel, give them the tea. Words Jack Solloway

thamesandhudson.com

2Talk Art RUSSELL TOVEY & ROBERT DIAMENT

Contemporary art is often considered difficult to understand: a world of sharks in formaldehyde, bananas taped to walls and beds left unmade. What does it all mean? In autumn 2018, actor Russell Tovey and gallerist Robert Diament launched the Talk Art podcast. Brought together by a shared love of collecting – and the Young British Artists – they started the show as a passion project with a particular goal in mind: “to help make art more accessible, more approachable, and to share a snapshot of the art world as it is today.” Since then, the duo has been spending time with an impressive range of creatives, learning about their life experiences in making, viewing or working with art. In its first year of broadcasting, Talk Art accumulated over one million downloads, with listeners in over 60 countries across the globe.

Three years on, and the podcast’s recent guests include Tracey Emin, Tyler Mitchell, Sunil Gupta and Catherine

Opie. Tovey and Diament have also released a book. The print edition of Talk Art is an extension of the show – acting as a launchpad for readers to develop their relationships with visual culture. Across all platforms, the pair remain dedicated to offering a “non-pretentious” open conversation that's immediately accessible.

What resonates most of all with this new title is the value placed on creativity, and the duo’s eagerness to share it with the world. “We love artists because they create imaginative new worlds and new languages. They stand outside mainstream society, looking in, keenly observing, analysing, criticising, and sometimes even celebrating humanity’s eccentricities… Art can transform and make possible the seemingly impossible; it can meaningfully contribute to and influence how we treat one another.” Words Eleanor Sutherland

octopusbooks.co.uk

3Mona Kuhn: Works MONA KUHN

“The nude is present in my work … as proof of our being, our presence in time, and ultimately our caring for what will be lost.” In an interview included in this career-spanning monograph, photographer Mona Kuhn (b. 1969) evokes something elemental in her practice, in which the human body seems to convey universal truths.

Born in Brazil to a family with German roots, Kuhn’s biography includes key turning points such as the discovery of Expressionism and the Bay Area Figurative Movement, both schools inspired by the emotive and metaphorical potential of the body. The same impetus runs through Kuhn’s creative development, and is evident in the images from 1996-2002, under the title Early Depictions, in which sections of the human form are arranged in positions suggesting prayer, embrace or mourning.

Time spent with naturalist communities in Europe inspired the more informal, group portraiture of the Evidence series (2000-2008). Nudes in sunlit interiors, surrounded by flowers, chairs, utensils and books, offer the barest threads of personal narrative. The erotic potential of these scenes is implicit in the entwinement of limbs, though it's not overstressed nor at the forefront of the art.

In Native (2007-2009) and Private (2012-2014), the reciprocity of human-made and natural habitats appears as a sub-plot to the human drama. The first of these projects returned Kuhn to Brazil after a 20-year absence, where the crumbling interior of a neo-colonial villa and the lush rainforests of Araponga provided contrasting backdrops. The latter explores the desert landscapes around the artist’s southern California home, drawing mesmeric comparisons between the folds of cloth and desiccated paper and the endless ripples of sand dunes. Words Greg Thomas