FNB Art Joburg
08-10.09.23
Sandton Convention
Centre, Johannesburg,
South Africa​

Process of Interest

The plea for hedonism in process

with Talia Ramkilawan

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Hedonistic, Talia Ramkilawan’s practice is a nuanced study of pleasure seeking. Considering Pleasure Over Pain at WHATIFTHEWORLD, we look at the ways her process informs this research in this week’s Of Interest.

A trained sculptor with painterly sensibilities, Talia Ramkilawan’s tapestries address generational trauma, suppression, erasure, deprivation, censorship and shame and by dismissing their existence.

In her last exhibition, Heart 4 Sale, Ramkilawan offered a testimony of the often painful, sometimes awkward, but always strengthening effects of being vulnerable. Following up from the artist’s depiction of the underbelly of love, lust and loathing, Pleasure Over Pain is a settling into.

Seasoning reality with fabulation, Ramkilawan’s depictions imagine an uninterrupted, celebrated and rewarded existence. Even though Ramkilawan’s portraits and still lifes are autobiographical, the work is considered fictitious. Depicting the lives of brown, queer, femmes, the scenes make up a marginal part of her holistic experience.

So even though the scenes are relaxed, blistering as a result of the repetitive and sharp nature of tufting on a surface as tough as hessian, Ramkilawan’s labour intensive process speak to how arduous the act of seeking pleasure is when in certain bodies.

The artist’s process involves using a rug-hooking technique to thread yarn and various fabrics through an open-weave hessian cloth. A dense woven fabric usually used as a substructure for linoleum flooring, rugs and carpets, one of Hessian’s earliest documentations include a 19th century record of being exported from India. The basis of Ramkilawan’s tapestries, it subtly acknowledges the artist’s foundation.

In consistently repeating the motion, Ramkilawan creates a series of tight loops within close proximity to each other. Together the loops make a tufted image.

An exhaustive technique that requires her to focus her energy on repeating a particular motion, the work attempts to address its harmful edge by offering the artist a meditative break. Then, focused on the end result, the process also offers a moment of disassociation, of escapist hope.

Subtle in its messaging, the show speaks to and reflects something Ramkilawan once told said: “I have always believed that disruption does not always have to be loud. It can be soft, beautiful and meditative.”

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Ruth Ige. Don't hide your glory, 2022.
Acrylic on canvas. 122 x 122cm. (© Copyright 2022, STEVENSON. All rights reserved)

Friday, 8th September

Collection tour of Anglo American

Location
144 Oxford Rd, Rosebank

Date
8 September 2023
11am

Event details

The Anglo American art and object collection is a combination of art collected over several decades through four different companies: Anglo American, de Beers Group, Anglo American Platinum and Kumba Iron Ore.

The collection comprises of 3600 works, with around 1000 pieces in the collection on display at the newly commissioned Rosebank offices. Although vast, the collection experienced an acquisition hiatus from the early 2000s until 2021 creating a significant gap in the collection’s representation of contemporary art. The collection now has a dedicated curator, Megan Scott, tasked with its cataloguing and digitisation, opening an exciting new chapter which will see the gradual procurement of significant works that reflect our contemporary South African and African art world.

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