Glasgow
Turner Prize nominee Delaine Le Bas’s current exhibition “Delainia: 17071965 Unfolding” (on view through October 13, 2024) is an enticing tour de force. Within this sprawling, multilayered, calico-tented environment, visitors encounter objects within various zones and settings that serve as exploratory spaces. Through an interweaving of textiles, embroidery, painting, collage, costume, soundscapes, installation, and performance, Le Bas draws on her British Romani heritage to survey centuries-old outsider tropes, fears, and witch hunts, frequently gesturing toward stereotypes directed at Romani, Gypsy, and Traveler peoples. With around 50 works from 1991 to the present day, this is a full and rich retrospective of her work, which excavates the acutely intersecting site of the personal and the political, articulating memories and places that hold importance for her.
Le Bas resists definition. Every corner of the exhibition—even the titles of works such as I am a Thieving Magpie (2018) or Fear is Contagious (2006)—holds a challenge. Viewers confront not only naked truths, but also moments of horror, identification, and occasional tenderness. Goddesses, witches, and rituals permeate Le Bas’s work, and the temporary architecture of the exhibition becomes a space addressing hostility, particularly against women. The “17071965” of the exhibition title is the artist’s date of birth, and the show unfurls her life and practice, with one thing leading to another. An upright, hooded female figure is held within a rickety handcart—as if in preparation for a trial or execution. Made from twisted aluminum wire, the cart is almost a provisional drawing in three dimensions. The surrounding calico walls are daubed with text. Yet words often fail when it comes to Le Bas, who recognizes language as exclusionary, particularly in her performance-installation Beware of Linguistic Engineering.
A towering goddess holds her arms outstretched, a hissing snake in each hand. This Medusa figure of sorts (adapted from Minoan snake goddess figurines) wears a crown emblazoned with the word “UNTAMED,” her unruly status depicted in multiple iterations on her clothing. Subsequent tableaux—a boxing ring, a configuration of hay bales, and a circular ritualistic space—make room for other types of encounters, providing a variety of access points for visitors to develop a conversation with Le Bas’s work. A masked figure with gloved hands oversees a gathering of dolls. Two sinister figures look on while a baby doll dressed in lemon and white is subjected to a guillotine. The sequined and sewn female figures of Pink Dolls 1, 2, 3 (2004) bask in a neon glow, while Running Figures (2024) animate the organza walls of a tent. More translucent than the calico used elsewhere, the organza allows a diffuse and evocative light to permeate this space.
Despite the multiplicity of figures that populate Le Bas’s work, they are usually herself. This variety in unity perhaps alludes to the complexity of human identity, its layering and variety. Her artistic practice becomes a vehicle to unfold her Romani identity, something that is in itself an act of resistance against the discrimination and demonization of a people.
