The Third Line, Frieze London, 2016, Installation View
The Third Line is participating in the 14th edition of Frieze London and is exhibiting an all women booth with works by Huda Lutfi, Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian, Rana Begum and Sophia Al Maria. The selection explores the concept of trompe-l'œil and the things that place perception on a precipice. Also part of Frieze programming, on October 6th, Sophia Al Maria will be in conversation with Stephanie Baily and Lawrence Lek at the fair’s Reading Room.
Returning to Frieze London, The Third Line will be part of more than 160 international galleries who will bring together the world’s most exciting emerging and established contemporary artists. The gallery will be presenting works by four important women artists, ranging between emerging and established, and highlighting significant works from the 70s till present day.
Monir’s works on paper carry the same principles of Islamic Geometry that can be found in her sculptures and mirror mosaics. The works presented at the fair include a selection of geometrical drawings made in the 70s, as well as more freehand and whimsical pieces made in the 1990s when she was living in New York. These offer a valuable insight into a lesser-known aspect of Monir’s oeuvre.
Rana’s sculptures are created through angles, planes and materials that ask the viewer's perception to be constantly renegotiating 'surface'. The works draw inspiration from urban visual stimuli, such as the abstract clashes of form and colour that can be seen in the city, and combines them with the traditional repetition of geometric form found in Islamic art.
Sophia’s abstracted glitch-photos force the viewer to do a double-take, step back and re-engage with the image. Her primary interests are based around the isolation of individuals via technology and reactionary Islam, the corrosive elements of consumerism and industry and the erasure of history and the blinding approach of a future no one is ready for.
Huda’s collages create a palimpsest-like surface, mixing the figure-ground relationship. The work excavates marginalized spaces that cross various historical and cultural contexts, mapping the politics of her engagement both as an historian and as an artist. The layered visuals, marked with elements such as plastic mannequins juxtaposed against blue skies or flat backgrounds, create surreal landscapes – suspending the idiosyncrasies and impossibilities of urbanity in unchartered space and time.
LEAP: Stephanie Bailey in conversation with Sophia Al-Maria and Lawrence Lek
Reading Room: Thursday, 6 Oct 2016, 2.30pm
Frieze London 2016, Regents Park
As a follow-up to ‘Children of Empire’, the January/February 2016 issue of LEAP magazine guest edited by LEAP contributing editor Stephanie Bailey, this discussion will explore the commonalities within the hybrid, diasporic, transglobal, and post-colonial cultural experiences of a post-20th century world through a discussion with two artists whose practices investigate the infrastructures of modernisation, and their impact on cultural identities: Sophia Al-Maria and Lawrence Lek. Are Gulf Futurism and Sinofuturism one and the same? Is futurism itself but the product of modernity’s relentless obsession with progress? If so, what does that
