ATLAS. A solo show by Sorrel Hofmann. At UCT Irma Stern Museum until March 4. DANNY SHORKEND reviews.
Expanse of desert, paths that lead over and through various terrains – and unpredictable at that – mark a series of paintings, ink drawings and linocuts by Sorrel Hofmann at the UCT Irma Stern Museum.
These artworks form part of the artist’s “examination of the place and space occupied by women on the African continent,” writes Andrew Lamprecht. This refers specifically to a residency at the edge of the Atlas Mountains in Morocco. Issues regarding the exclusion and alienation of woman on many levels are addressed.
The images of sand dunes are at once an abstract beige-like hue as well as a literal description. The success of these works is the sense of journeying, of movement and integration with the place. She is engaging with the essence of the natural environment and then translates that into neat lines, shapes and colours.
Many of these works, in particular the more calligraphic ink and watercolour studies, are like writing, an ideograph of sorts, and a language. Yet the language is somewhat cryptic as the artist gives the viewer only a few cues to go on - a fence; traversing a mountain, a figure; some sort of architectural design - and then that dissolves as abstract form and line-making.
Many of the images are foreboding, as if there is an ominous spectre that abounds. This contrasts with the softer, lighter colours and sensitive line. What is particularly pleasing is the artist’s consciousness of the brushmark - a certain thickness that results in a particular line, a certain speed with which to make that line and the effects of the brush on the particular surface she has chosen. This awareness gives the work a meditative quality and also assists in forging a cohesive link between the works.
Another aspect that adds to the experience of the viewer is possibly her ability to say something with an economy of means, that is the fact of simplification, a sense that the clutter of sensations and feelings have been reduced, for want of a better word, to a few basic shapes and lines.
Perhaps this mirrors the emptiness of the desert; perhaps it mirrors the emptiness of lives, in particular women, left on the fringes of society, dominated by ideologies and practices that don’t always favour women in these regions.
The sense of immersion in the art and inspired by the context in which this research occurs means that Hofmann has created a series of sketch-like documentations.
Yet it is more than sketch-like, as the works have a certain emotive charm, never to the point of dramatic overload.
In accord with the space, the Sahara desert, she has allowed space to speak - emptiness, nothingness, potential loss and danger. At the same time there is a beauty to this: the lack of heaviness, of a melancholy that can only but weigh a person down. That is not to say she eschews materiality, for many of her works, in particular a large canvas “notebook” or “diary”, in fact does engage with a tactile sense of place.
Hofmann’s artistic output is such that one gets a sense that she is both immersed in the context she has journeyed to and attempts to give an account from what may be termed an “onlooker consciousness”.
This dichotomy has often played itself out in particular in historic and artistic accounts of ancient and exotic lands, usually with an interpretative bias that precisely exoticises and mystifies the so-called object of research. In this regard, images of the colonial “project”, as it were, “others” difference claiming discovery on the part of the explorer now tasked with the “edification” of “other”.
Hofmann avoids this tradition, and one senses her sensitivity and subjectivity without the assumption she can speak for others or simply do some sort of taxonomy. This is hard to achieve, as Foucault once argued one is both an “enslaved sovereign” and “observed spectator”.