Zarina Bhimji
Lead White (detail). 2018
111 C-print photographs (Colour Chromogrenic mounted on paper, magnets); 2 embroidery works; overall dimensions variable.
Gallery 5, Al Mureijah Art Spaces
Commissioned by Sharjah Art Foundation
About this work
The major Sharjah Art Foundation commission Lead White (2018), part of the Foundation’s collection, is on view in the exhibition. Evoking painterly concerns, the work’s title references the only pigment used to make white paint until the 19th century. A meditation on power, legality and beauty 10 years in the making, the work is an installation of photographs and textiles that explore the vast reaches of power. The work conveys the colonial enterprise through qualities of colour and light, extending the customary use of white as an accent to imbue compositions with a sense of shape and dimension. An exercise in tactility—‘touching’ documents with the camera, nudging a particular colour with the eye or grasping textures in dialogue—develops from the artist’s ongoing investigation into the physical manifestations of vulnerability. Letters, envelopes, seals and other official records sourced in national archives across multiple continents are surveyed for impressions and images that offer insight into Britain and Europe as the cultures that produced them. From some 5,000 digital images, Bhimji selected just over a 100—adjusting for scale, colour, tone and composition—to draw attention to the ways in which gesture and traces of institutional ideology compound and unravel themselves in documents. Lead White is envisioned as a visual score, a crescendo of image and motion that builds through the repetition of words and languages of force.
© From SAF press information
© Zarina Bhimji. All Rights Reserved, DACS/Artimage 2020. Photo: Shanavas Jamaluddin, Sharjah Art Foundation
2 octubre 2020 - 10 abril 2021. Panorama de obras fundamentales de la artista en cine, fotografía e instalación. Galerías 4, 5 y 6, Al Mureijah Art Spaces, Sharjah Art Foundation. Curadora: Hoor Al Qasimi.