Mohammed Kazem, Cristiana de Marchi and Chittrrovanu Mazumdar
Displaying works by Emirati artist Mohammed Kazem, Italian/Lebanese Cristiana de Marchi and Indian Chittrovanu Mazumdar, Soundless aims at creating a dialogue between artworks and at investigating the many ways dialectics is generated.
During the past few years, the creative path and the expressive process of these three artists have followed individual directions and never directly crossed. Nevertheless, on several occasions encounters have resonated as a chance to deepen the common elements and possible interactions between the works of art of these three artists. Rather than stating a concept or validating a point of view, “Soundless” makes the dialogue actual and allows the conversation to take body and develop.
The exhibition displays a selection of Mohammed Kazem’s Scratches and of Cristiana de Marchi’s embroideries, both characterized by the subtlety of the technique and of the result, almost disappearing and inviting the viewers to approach the work with all their senses. Both these series are echoed, and amplified like only echo can do, by the installations and videos of Chittrrovanu Mazumdar, dramatically self imposing and yet delicately evoking themes of eternity and presence.
“My work is related to the global transformations that are occurring today in the social, political, and natural environment”, says Mohammed Kazem. Through my work I reflect on the multiple events around me and raise issues closely related to specific aspects that have affected my personal biography, such as the changes in the UAE or situations I have experienced through my travels internationally. I aim to produce works, which are animated by a sense of harmony, by using photos, images, video, and available technologies, but I also use traditional and conventional practices like drawing and painting when necessary to convey or support my concept. I am fascinated by collecting and documenting information about seemingly unimportant objects, traces of our presence, within a particular environment, by photographing them and identifying and mapping their coordinates. I use GPS as a tool for drawing shapes, recording an item’s location, and/or provoking political issues by using this tool in various ways to create multiple dimensions of meaning.
Cristiana de Marchi explores (through performance, video, and installations of embroidered objects and tapestries) issues related to verbalization and translation, to the correspondence between physical and nominal dimensions. Some of her themes are the use of languages in propaganda, the transition between ‘territories’ and contexts, the redefinition of memory and identity.
The use of words is regulated by the contradictory and conventional reference to a set system of cultural (in the wider sense) rules. Communication somehow eludes these rules. The use of body and the combination of both verbal and non-verbal languages is a main focus of my research. The simple fact of naming objects, of juxtaposing the noun and the material object symbolised by the noun opens to a wider horizon of possible meanings, alluding to further dimensions thus paradoxically enhancing the potentialities of language as if the physical dimension could deepen the linguistic one and could create meaningful mental associations.”
A writer and a poet, Cristiana de Marchi shows through her work a deep attention to the power and influence of words, to the role of narratives, to the possibilities of words associations, to meaningful breaks, embracing the very idea that storytelling ultimately needs a gap to originate from.
An artist with a truly international sensibility, Chittrrovanu Mazumdar draws from an ever – shifting sea of eclectic sources. Dramatic plays of light and heightened colour values are visual hallmarks of his sophisticated oeuvre. Mazumdar’s imagery emerges out of daily discoveries: a word, a glance, the heartrending/blood –chilling phrase, a fleeting mise en scene…the rise and crest of body imprisoned in tight freeze – frame: both source and association are intensely private and sensual.
Schooled in European art traditions – his art education was completed in India, followed by a working stint in France. Mazumdar finds multi – disciplinary collaborations a source of excitement, and he is known to engage with professionals from various disciplines including theatre and publishing.
Renowned for his eclectic use of material and medium Chittrrovanu Mazumdar has been continuously reinventing himself over the past three decades. At the exhibition he will exhibit a series of metal and light works. “The origin of darkness to light… luminous in completeness yet born of the dark.” As well as a series of videos titled - Nights of Matryoshka Dreaming - a set of short fictionalised stories, between innocence, the erotic and the sublime, in a day to day situation of the lives around Calcutta.
