Brown Pillars

Aida Azin

Gallery 1
Opening 07.08.19 6-8pm
Artist Talks 29.08.19 6-7pm

Brown Pillars reconsiders the gallery space to critique the effects of institutional racism in art systems. 

Food wrappers are a continuous motif in the artworks as a reference to the way in which I found my identity in Asian grocery stores when I could not find it reflected in the art world. 

A scaffolding system made from bamboo poles is used as a visual metaphor to bring form to the contradictory condition, inside the gallery system, where ‘brown bodies’ are hyper-visible and simultaneously invisible. The grid scaffolding references modernism, while the bamboo represents the labour and ingenuity of the people on whose backs European Modernism staked its claim to singularity. In defiance of this singularity, I argue that the West does not own either Modernism or modernity. 

The labor of African, Asian, Latinx and Indigenous people has been historically invisible from what the West deems ‘serious art’, and still they are tokenised in this performance of ‘inclusivity’. 

images

Aida Azin, Black Foot, 2017, spray paint, oil stick, acrylic and digital print on canvas, dimensions variable, photo credit: Tyrone Ormsby

Aida Azin, Brown Pillars, 2017, acrylic and digital print on canvas, dimensions variable, photo credit: Tyrone Ormsby

Aida Azin, Pink Head, 2017, mixed media, acrylic and digital print on canvas, dimensions variable, photo credit: Tyrone Ormsby