Goodman Gallery presents One that includes myth, a group exhibition about the meditative practices expressed through materiality, featuring work by twelve contemporary artists from around the world with a focus on artists originating from the global South.
Walker provides a salient framework for considering how traditional handwork can be a tool for the way in which these contemporary artists’ play with ideas of time. Works throughout the exhibition reference cultural practices that have been on the precipice of being lost, which have been preserved through a contemporary lens. whose works use meditative and manual processes to consider nonlinear approaches to time in relation to ‘post’-colonialism and traditional forms of making from South Africa to Ghana and Malaysia.
Through undertaking an intentionally slow and laborious practice, the maker eschews manual techniques and re-engages with forms of production that suggest an earlier or alternative way of living. Laura Lima’s lara, (2023) is new work, part of a series of what the artist calls, giant textured drawings woven and knitted together. They are delicate works and are dyed with natural techniques, using pigments of vegetable origin the works are transitional as their colours will fade slowly over time. Lima recently opened a major installation, Balé Literal at MACBA Barcelona, shown for the first time outside of Brazil.
Artworks
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Kapwani Kiwanga’s Flowers for Africa: Union of South Africa (2017) focuses on natural phenomena, the discipline of floristry and the traces of human presence therein. In this ongoing project, the artist consults with florists to re-create flower arrangements, referencing archival imagery from independence ceremonies on the African continent, and re-contextualises them in the contemporary gallery space where they gradually wilt and die. The Union of South Africa occurred in Cape Town in 1910 and saw for the first time a union of settlers in South Africa and a rejection of the rights of the native people. The union created a self-governing dominion of the British empire. The garlands on view are replicas of those hung on St.Georges Street in Cape Town.
El Anatsui’s Sovereignty (2021) explores geometry and form through materiality and negotiates the complexities of what it means to create as an artist from the continent. The work uses a combination of biotic, non-linear and ordered lines chaotically tangled to reflect the violently established laws that organise the flow of humans through restrictions, while also drawing attention to natural pathways and channels.
Yee I-Lann’s work & (black), & (white), Exploding & (black), Exploding & (white) (2021) engages with the complex history of the islands of Southeast Asia. Through bamboo weave she addresses the socio-political impact of current politics, neo-colonialism, and globalisation. Her work has a particular focus on themes and forms of makings that reference the indigenous cultures of Borneo. The works look at narratives lost in the past and consider possible futures.
Across his practice, through the medium of collage Remy Jungerman draws parallels between the geometric patterns of textiles indigenous to Maroon culture and to Modernism, particularly the Dutch strain epitomised by Piet Mondrian. Connecting, juxtaposing or contrasting cultures is intrinsic to his pursuit of an autonomous visual language, which deftly interweaves the cultures of the countries that define him: Suriname, the Netherlands and the United States.
Finally artists like Ghada Amer’s in her 2003 work Another Grey Iman approach the theme of meditative and manual processes to understand issues and restrictions related to gender and restriction of women's bodies in her native Egypt. Amer focuses on the traditionally female medium of embroidery to reject oppressive laws set in place to govern women’s attitudes toward their bodies.
