Lina Iris Viktor was born in 1987, in Britain, to parents from Liberia, West Africa. She now lives and works in New York.
This wonderful FREE exhibition of her stunning art at the Autograph gallery in Shoreditch is Viktor’s first major solo show in the UK, with more than 60 works on display.
It’s in two parts, the downstairs gallery and the upstairs gallery.
Downstairs: Dark Continent
First, they have created a special atmosphere by painting the walls white and installing an elaborate metal grilled partition, designed as the outlines of zoomorphic shapes. In fact it is titled The Black Ark and its latticed, modular design is inspired by the nets of Liberian fishermen. Beside it is dotted metallic tropical foliage which appears in her Dark Continent paintings, transformed into sculptures (and titled Black Botanica).
In and out of this installation you wander as you take in the half dozen or so massive paintings and the 50 or so wonderful prints.
Installation view of Lina Iris Viktor at Autograph showing The Black Ark latticework. Photo by the author
Both the large pictures and the normal-sized prints begin with striking photos Viktor has taken of herself nude. But not au naturel. She has painted her naked body the deepest darkest shade of black possible.
She adopts a pose (lying down, sitting towards us, sideways-on, yawning, apparently moaning or sleeping or reaching out – there are over 50 different poses) and the prints the resulting large digital photo onto canvas. But the photo is only the start of a long and arduous process. Viktor then paints in:
- a deep jet black background
- an orange-golden head-dress (and a sly touch of gold at her loins, sometimes visible sometimes not)
- a burnished beaten golden sun image
- in the foreground a flutter of short flowers and grasses painted in whitish-grey
II. For Some Are Born to Endless Night. Dark Matter from the series Dark Continent: The Seven (2015-9) by Lina Iris Viktor. Courtesy of the artist and Mariane Ibrahim Gallery
The black really is deep jet black. Viktor’s work explores the notion and fact of blackness: as colour, as material and as political statement. Viktor is quoted as calling black ‘the proverbial materia prima: the source, the dark matter that birthed everything’.
Upstairs: The Blue Void
The room upstairs is painted a solid, opulent ultramarine blue (emulating the ‘Blue Room’ in Viktor’s New York studio). In it hang four massive paintings, except that ‘painting’ doesn’t do justice to the immensely ornate, decorated, raised surfaces of these highly ornamented artifacts.
Installation view of Syzygy by Lina Iris Viktor at Autograph. Photo by the author
Only by going up close to the paintings can you see the extraordinary care and attention which has gone into creating and raised and embossed surfaces. Those patterns on the cloak or kaftan she’s wearing in the painting above have been created by arranging hundreds of individual tiny balls into shapes and patterns, and then painting them silver.
Take this work, from the series A Haven. A Hell. A Dream Deferred and titled Eleventh. The words embossed across the surface of the work refer to tribes in Liberia, the sinuous golden lines refer to maps and tribal borders, and so the whole thing can be interpreted in a political or sociological way as a comment on the creation and tribulations of the free slave state of Liberia.
Eleventh from the series A Haven. A Hell. A Dream Deferred by Lina Iris Viktor (2018) Courtesy of the artist and Mariane Ibrahim Gallery
In the words of the wall label:
The A Haven. A Hell. A Dream Deferred. works reinterpret the Libyan Sybil, a prophetess from antiquity invoked by eighteenth-century abolitionists as a mythical oracle who foresaw the trans-Atlantic slave trade.
But the real artistic point (for me, at any rate) is the incredible detailing of the raised surfaces. The big golden pillar behind the woman’s head looks as if it has been beaten and hammered into elaborate shapes and reliefs. And the golden lines aren’t painted flat – they are raised lines, as if created out of clay or plasticine, and then carefully gilded.
Detail from Eleventh from the series A Haven. A Hell. A Dream Deferred by Lina Iris Viktor (2018) Courtesy of the artist and Mariane Ibrahim Gallery. Photo by the author
In fact these shapes are formed of copolymer resin which has been used to build up all manner of relief surfaces across the work, from the waving lines, to the outlines of the flowers, or the wording, as you can see from this close-up detail. The whole surface is incredibly elaborately constructed, built up from a mind-bogglingly three-dimensional elements.
It’s almost always true that it’s better to see works of art in the flesh rather than as reproductions, precisely because of the added excitement, interest and dynamism conveyed by big three-dimensional objects, but it is especially true of Viktor’s work.
As a man I openly admit that the initial ‘hit’ from most of the Dark Continent pieces is the impression of an attractive naked woman in a variety of poses – but get beyond that first impression and you are free to respond to the dazzlingly complex, strange, mysterious and entrancing symbols and motifs which Viktor has surrounded herself with, the shimmering lines and spirals and triangles and whorls picked out in thick 24-karat gold, gleaming and shimmering against the primal blackness.
It creates a rich and deep and wonderful visual experience. Go and see.
Materia Prima II by Lina Iris Viktor (2015) Courtesy of the artist and Mariane Ibrahim Gallery
Video
In this interview Viktor explains the importance to her art of 24-karat gold leaf (and ultramarine blue and black and white).
Related links
- Lina Iris Viktor continues at Autograph ABP until 25 January 2020
- Exhibition guide
- Lina Iris Viktor website
- Article about Viktor in Artsy.net
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