Alvaro Barrington, Varda Caivano, Nir Evron, Richard Ayodeji Ikhide, Laura Lima, Mohamed Namou, Nam June Paik, Seth Price, Hiraki Sawa, Raqib Shaw, Nobuko Tsuchiya, Francis Upritchard and Saya Woolfalk
No horizon, no edge to liquid explores the concept of cultural hybridity as a space in which cultures meet: where bridges are built between societies through the processes of communication, negotiation, and translation. The exhibition includes work by thirteen artists, all of whom were born outside North America or continental Europe, although many have since immigrated there. Encompassing a diverse array of media – painting, sculpture, video and installation – the exhibition explores how varying forms of hybridity can manifest through artworks: it might be expressed through materiality, the blending of traditional and new media, the dialogue between two cultures, or the interplay between art/craft, high/low or popular/elite.
Cultural hybridity is a pertinent topic in 2020: a point in which globalisation seems maximised, movement and migration seem inevitable, and yet shared borders worldwide are becoming increasingly rigid, with the UK poised to remove itself from the EU. Cultural hybridity seems both a logical outcome of our cultural moment, and a potential tool for resistance against rising nationalist sentiments. At the core of the key post-colonial theorist Homi Bhabha’s works on cultural hybridity are descriptions of hybrid narrative, experience and self-conscious perspective. Bhabha argues that new transcultural forms are produced throughout contact between a coloniser, or dominant culture, and its subject. This exchange produces a new ‘hybrid’ that stands in opposition to fixed national identities of cultures and belonging, negotiating a space in resistance to the dominant discourse, and questioning the idea that ‘culture’ is ever singular.
Most of the artists in No horizon, no edge to liquid are products of international movement – born in one place, educated in another, settled somewhere else. Some have chosen to remain in their homelands, whilst their artworks travel across the globe. Their works are manifestations of multiple forms of cultural hybridity, looking at and intertwined with multiple cultures. In some cases this is a literal intertwining: in a series by Alvaro Barrington, coarse yarn is woven through found postcards depicting European landmarks. Engaging with a tradition of women’s handicrafts, from the Greek myth of Penelope to the textiles made by the artist’s own aunts in Grenada, Barrington uses this domestic and ‘minor’ technique to overwrite the implicit power of European architecture with his own narrative, building an alternative vision into an existing view of the world.
| Duration | 16 January 2020 - 23 February 2020 |
| Times | Thursday – Sunday 12–6pm |
| Cost | Free |
| Venue | Zabludowicz Collection |
| Address | 176 Prince of Wales Road, London, NW5 3PT |
| Contact | / info@zabludowiczcollection.com / www.zabludowiczcollection.com |