On the Cover:
Reza Aramesh, Action 194: Study of the Head as Cultural Artefacts, 2017. Hand-carved Carrara marble, head: 23 x 33 x 35 cm.; plinth: 100 x 40 x 40 cm. Photo: Nicola Gnesi, Courtesy Reza Aramesh.
Editor’s Letter:
Several of the artists featured in this issue take up that perennial and foundational subject of art, the body. In Reza Aramesh’s work, violence acts as the unseen cause of all that we see, often bodies in distress or parts of bodies, rendered in marble or painted wood. Jesse Darling creates assemblages and installations that, in part, explore the human figure in all its complexity, atypicality, and precarity. Even when his pieces aren’t explicitly about the body, they take a relation to it into account. “The somatic encounter is really important,” he says. Indeed, the somatic encounter could be said to form the basis of Daniel Firman’s practice; he has long been interested in both dance and architecture, with their relationship between the body and space. And while his performances, sculptures, and assemblages employ any number of forms, he always conceives his “exhibitions as a composition where the human body, objects, space, and architecture interact while integrating elements that shape our relationship with the world through language.” Although Cannupa Hanska Luger’s practice is not centered on the body, he brings Indigenous knowledge to work that very much explores our relationship with the world. Luger’s varied output—sculpture, video, performance, and social activism—creates “regalia and ceremonies as technologies” that question our understanding of institutions and histories as well as things as basic as time and nature. And, where Luger ranges widely, Monira Al Qadiri focuses her efforts through a single lens, our dependence on fossil fuels, that nevertheless seems to open onto an entire world. Often iridescent and deceptively light, her futuristic sculptural objects bring a buoyant sensibility to an otherwise weighty and depressing subject. In this, she is similar to the other artists here, who all manage to transform the conceptual sources of their practices into gloriously sensual and engaging material. —Daniel Kunitz, Editor-in-Chief
