NEW YORK, NY.- Following recent acquisitions by the Baltimore Museum of Art and others, the Iraqi- American painter Vian Sora (b. 1976, Baghdad; based in Louisville, Kentucky since 2009) has opened her first New York solo exhibition at
David Nolan Gallery (24 East 81 Street, a block from the Met).
Vian Sora: End of Hostilities consists of new work that furthers her practice’s abstract, gestural distillation of her experience coming of age in Baghdad. Central to the work are themes of war, political upheaval, migration, and subsequent geographic and cultural displacement. Said the artist:
“Since leaving Iraq in 2006, my works expressively address these issues through a synthesis of styles and iconography taken from both my native and adopted cultures. Using a variety of techniques, my mixed media paintings attempt to figure imagery that suggests the struggle of the individual in the face of war and tyranny, often employing faceless, androgynous figures that transmute into abstract. This search for beauty amid destruction is translated into my compositions through a conscious embrace of decay. For me these emotionally intense ‘landscapes’ act as metaphors that simultaneously signify the turmoil of war and the dynamics of change.”
Before her family’s home was raided in 1994 and her father abducted, Sora grew up in an academic household with worldly values diametrically opposed to the dictatorship: her father was an art gallery owner and her mother’s family owned an antiques auction house. An interest in global arts and culture was nurtured, with summer trips to European museums and cultural sites. These vacations were annual respites from the climate of war; with a Kurdish father, Sora and her family were justifiably in constant fear of surveillance. The raid occurred in May 1994, on the day of her high school graduation party. In addition to her father’s abduction was the seizure of belongings from her family home and her father’s gallery. For months, the family believed her father had been executed. In late- September, he showed up on the family’s doorstep a changed man, having remarkably negotiated his own release.
Though her family had previously encouraged her to attend art school (after the seizure of her family’s valuables, Sora created and sold paintings for small sums), Sora opted for a more lucrative trade, enrolling in a computer science program as one of four women among a class of over 200. In 2006, she left Iraq and went to Turkey, where she studied printmaking in Istanbul. In 2009 she arrived in the U.S., residing in Louisville, Kentucky ever since.
“The regeneration of life from the detritus is an underlying theme within my work,” said Sora. “I seek to break boundaries and restraints, allowing free expression across cultures, and to test the limits that are self-imposed both on individual bodies and our nation states as well.”
Also reflected in Sora’s work is a lifelong fascination with ancient Mesopotamia. Her principal affinity is for the technological innovation that occurred within the society, but she also has a deep interest in present-day archaeological sites—in terms of the archaeology; geology; and anthropology itself, but also the geopolitics of looting as an unmitigated emblem of the theft of cultural heritage in all forms.
From a formal standpoint, Sora initiates each of her compositions with a controlled chaos, covering surfaces in a barrage of fast-drying spray paint, acrylics, pigments, and inks, using whatever is within arm’s reach — brushes, sponges, paper, nylons, spray bottles or even the force of her own breath — to create passages of intricate texture that might be described as delicate if not for their color intensity. Textural associations range from the earthly (desiccated land, wood grain, animal pelt) to the celestial (gaseous cloud formations, swirling interstellar dust) to the biological and grotesque (networks of capillaries, fragments of bone). Atop this textured base, Sora uses a small brush to precisely apply an opaque, flat layer that often resembles hard-edge biomorphic cutouts.
Through this process, optical trickery can occur, as the opaque sections alternately recede to the background and cause the textured base layer to be viewed as foreground elements.
While the new body of work builds upon the longstanding core themes of her practice, it reflects an increased focus on the tension between figuration and abstraction. Sora describes this as a way to more deeply explore her subject matter: “In these recent works, figures and cultural signs are progressively enmeshed in gestural fields of color, rendering them sometimes invisible. I employ these atmospheric-type surfaces and layer them with lattices whose optical ambiguities create illusions of light and movement, of time and space. My intention is to suggest the turmoil that can disturb the thin surface of social order, and its effect on the human soul. It is at the borders—of nature, of nations, the borders of the body--where the lines of coherence are most clear. When the constructed bodies break down and disintegrate, we may then discover that they were never really whole but always in flux and fluid.”
Sora is highly intentional in the shapes she calls forth from the at-first seemingly disordered compositions. For instance, in Verdict (2019-2022), on the left side of the canvas she creates the suggestion of a figure with a pink face and golden garments. To the right, an ominous bird-like form threatens to overtake the human figure in its exaggerated size. Abstract patches of pink and white offer additional biomorphic suggestion to the viewer, though Sora grounds the composition in a sense of balance with soft, azure curves that envelop the forms.
Many of Sora’s works take on the characteristics of landscapes, with clearly demarcated horizon lines, gradient skies, and a profusion of bloom- and foliage-like shapes. Sora has recalled with fondness the hours of her Baghdad childhood spent among the roses and pomegranate shrubs of her grandmother’s garden. With her 2023 painting Eden, shapes are sharply defined and resemble tropical foliage or a bird’s plumage, with textures that recall stars scattered across the cosmos. Still, Sora leaves plenty of room for ambiguity and darkness, as when joyful memories of ‘home’ are tainted with the painful knowledge that one can never return there.
David Nolan, who since the 1980s has nurtured the New York introduction of numerous now-canonical artists, said: “Vian is one of the most dynamic painters I’ve seen in a long time. The vitality, the explosive power of her handling of paint comes across as intuitive and direct. The lush colors are from nature and life experience that drag us into her world without pretense. Beautifully integrated is the ancient history of her homeland, in which philosophy, science, poetry, and other disciplines flourished for centuries alongside a confluence of cultures. Her voice is one of deep resonance.”
Vian Sora (b. 1976, Baghdad, Iraq) has lived and worked in Louisville, Kentucky since 2009. She received a BS from Al Mansour University in Baghdad, Iraq in 2000 and studied printmaking in 2006-2007 under the tutelage of Süleyman Tekcan at the Istanbul Museum of Graphic Arts (IMOGA). Sora’s work has been presented in solo and group exhibitions nationally and internationally including the Speed Art Museum, Louisville, KY; Contemporary Arts Center (CAC), Cincinnati, OH; Sharjah Biennale, Sharjah, UAE; Imoga Istanbul Museum of Graphic Art, Istanbul, Turkey; Japanese Foundation Culture Center, Ankara, Turkey; and the Baghdad Art International Art Festival in Iraq; as well as the KMAC Triennial, Louisville, KY; Grinnell Museum of Art, Grinnell, IA; and U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Washington D.C., among others. Her work is included in the collections of the Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD; Dar El Cid Museum, Kuwait City, Kuwait; KMAC Museum, Louisville, KY; Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, CA; Speed Art Museum, Louisville, KY; Grinnell College Museum of Art, Grinnell, IA; Ministry of Culture Contemporary Collection, Baghdad, Iraq; the Pizzuti Collection, Columbus, OH; Fidelity Art Collection, Boston, MA, as well as numerous private collections.
David Nolan Gallery
Vian Sora: End of Hostilities
October 26th, 2023 - December 9th, 2023
