BROWN PETAL NABEEHA MOHAMED - THE ...
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BROWN PETAL NaBeeha MOHAMED
BROWN PETAL by Nabeeha Mohamed Lounging sunglasses, golden heart lockets and fantastical floral bouquets sprouting from ceramic vessels are just some of the wonderful oddities that make up Nabeeha Mohamed’s latest collection of works. This colourful menagerie of oil paintings and watercolours is tenderly titled Brown Petal. Brown Petal started with a series of failed experiments. Mohamed had spent a few weeks in the studio creating watercolours that somehow didn’t quite work. Torn between not wanting to lose the time spent and wishing to breathe new life into the compositions, she decided to cut them up to create fresh arrangements. She says, “I began collaging these “failed” watercolours together creating more full and harmonious compositions, which I think was what was lacking in the original works.” The new arrangements contain word cut-outs and anthropomorphic forms that have a more carefree flair than the original works. The cut-out technique interrupts the scale and depth perception with some elements almost jumping off the picture plane, somewhat reminiscent of childhood pop-up books. Experimentation and discovery are at the heart of Mohamed’s practice. Oil painting and watercolours have always served as separate, yet connected, strands of her artmaking process. While Mohamed’s watercolours pieces sometimes serve as sketches for oil paintings, the translation is never direct and they exist as artworks in their own right. “I like the freedom of moving between different mediums and I find they all feed into each other. A change in mediums can ensure that neither my thinking nor technique becomes stagnant,” Mohamed explains. The scenes presented are at once fanciful, and personal as the objects depicted carry with them the intimacy of passed down heirlooms. While familiar, her arrangements are too imbued with a
sense of grandeur resembling dreamlike monuments. Her approach in rendering objects is conversational in that her flowers and compositions begin as direct translations from real life, but may then morph or grow into more imaginative objects. Mohamed muses, “It’s a constant process of adding and taking away, allowing the painting to direct its own life and its own end.” Aptly, this conversational approach extends to her way of working with text. Mohamed collects texts from books, songs and podcasts while also writing personal poetry. Selected words or phrases are transcribed onto big scraps of newsprints she keeps on her studio walls alongside her paintings. Mohamed says, “I work with text in a very cut-paste way. When I’m making new artworks I can read through these notes which can either serve to elevate meaning in a piece or bring about new reading in a work altogether.” This process of meaning-making through both selection and chance encounters is palpable in her final works where the viewer’s lived experience creates an additional intersection of meaning. The title is lifted from a text cut-out included in one of the collaged watercolours which read, “darling baby brown petal”. While the origin of this phrase is anonymous, it is met as a joyful celebration of the softness of brown love. Brown bodies are often denied the full scope of human emotion and delight that privileged bodies are automatically afforded. This collection of works alludes to the softness and vulnerability of brown people, without performing for the white gaze. Of this Mohamed says, “I think many of my works are like little love letters to myself. Because they often speak directly to my identity, they are also works dedicated to women and more specifically, women of colour. As a result, the tone of much of my work can vary between playful, pensive, gentle, humorous and passionate. But at the very core of all these evocations, I think there is a space for holding.” Brown Petal was birthed from experimentation and the simple pleasure of piecing together existing forms to conjure something new. These works revel in their playfulness; a gentle reminder that sometimes the process of rearranging makes space for new discoveries. For sales and enquiries please contact Jana Terblanche at janababezterblanche@gmail.com All prices in this catalogue are exclusive of VAT
NaBEEHa MOHAMED B. 1998, Cape Town, South Africa Nabeeha Mohamed Nabeeha Mohamed was born in Cape Town in 1988. She studied at the Michaelis School of Fine Art at the University of Cape Town. Her very personal work grapples with the contradictions of identity and class privilege in post-Apartheid South Africa. Her position as a woman of colour, hushed during her childhood years in an attempt to assimilate to the white society and culture she grew up in, is now celebrated in her paintings where colour and strangeness take centre stage. These celebrations of identity are intersected with a playful critique of the capitalist economy and class privilege from which she benefits. Nabeeha has participated in group exhibitions locally and internationally, notably Speculative Inquiry #1 (on Abstraction) (Michaelis Galleries, Cape Town), Limininality in Infinite Space (African Artists’ Foundation, Lagos), Self-Identity in the Face of the Global Pandemic (Gallery 1957, London), Melancholympics, The Wunderwall, (PLUS- ONE Gallery, Antwerp, Belgium), Don’t Give A Damns (Marian Cramer Projects, Amsterdam), Map of the New Art (Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Venice), Outside the Lines: An Exploration of Abstract Materiality (WHATIFTHEWORLD, Cape Town), HB (A Humble Little Show) and Fugly (Chandler House, Cape Town) and Close Encounters (SMITH Studio, Cape Town). She has participated in residencies at Casa de Ilhabela, Brazil and at the gallery, Johannesburg. Brown Petal is her third solo presentation following, Dressing Room at WHATIFTHEWORLD in June 2021 and Sunshine on My Skin is My Favourite Colour at SMITH in 2020.
Solo exhibitions 2021 Dressing Room, WhatiftheWorld, Cape Town 2020 Sunshine on my skin is my favourite colour, SMITH, Cape Town Art fairs 2020 FNB Art Joburg, WhatiftheWorld 2020 154 New York, Nuweland 2020 Art Rotterdam, Nuweland 2020 Investec Cape Town Art Fair, SMITH 2019 FNB Art Joburg, SMITH 2019 Investec Cape Town Art Fair, SMITH Group exhibitions 2021 Postcards, Galleri Magnus Karlsson, Gotland 2021 Self-Identity in the Face of the Global Pandemic, Gallery 1957, London, United Kingdom 2020 Liminality in Infinite Space, African Artists’ Foundation, Lagos, Nigeria 2020 Melancholympics, The Wunderwall, PLUS- ONE Gallery, Antwerp, Belgium 2020 Don’t Give A Damns, Marian Cramer Projects, Amsterdam 2019 Rendezvous II, SMITH, Cape Town 2019 Speculative Enquiry #1, On Abstraction, Michaelis Galleries, Cape Town 2019 Bad Taste: Image in Crisis, SMITH Cape Town 2019 Outside, RK Contemporary, Cape Town 2019 Know this place?, KZNSA, Durban 2019 Rocks, gallery, gallery, Johannesburg 2018 Rendezvous, SMITH, Cape Town 2018 Close Encounters, SMITH, Cape Town 2017 Summertide, The Gallery, Riebeeck Kasteel 2016 HB (A Humble Little Show), Chandler House, Cape Town 2016 Fugly ,Chandler House, Cape Town 2015 Map of the New Art, Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Venice 2012 Outside the Lines: An Exploration of Abstract Materiality, Whatiftheworld, Cape Town Residencies 2019 gallery gallery, Johannesburg 2017 Casa de Ilhabela, Ilhabela, Brazil
Bedside Arrangement, 2021 Oil on canvas 75 x 60 cm Framed in black aluminium 45 000 ZAR
Midnight Arums, 2021 Oil on canvas 45 x 35 cm Framed in black aluminium 30 000 ZAR
Spring, 2021 Oil on canvas 40 x 30 cm Framed in Kiaat 28 000 ZAR
Nobody's Bowl, 2021 Oil on canvas 62 x 82 cm Framed in aluminium 40 000 ZAR
Lucie's Blooms, 2021 Oil on canvas 64 x 79 cm Framed in Walnut 42 000 ZAR
Baby Monument, 2021 Watercolour collage 37 x 27 cm Framed in Kiaat 12 000 ZAR
XOXO, 2021 Watercolour collage 37 x 27 cm Framed in Kiaat 12 000 ZAR
Dainty, 2021 Watercolour collage 37 x 27 cm Framed in Kiaat 12 000 ZAR
More Beautiful, 2021 Watercolour collage 37 x 27 cm Framed in Kiaat 12 000 ZAR
Istanbul Souvenir, 2021 Watercolour collage 37 x 27 cm Framed in Kiaat 12 000 ZAR
Prada and blossoms, 2021 Watercolour collage 37 x 27 cm Framed in Kiaat 12 000 ZAR
The Philanthropist's Dilemma, 2021 Watercolour on paper 40 x 34 cm Framed in Kiaat 13 500 ZAR
Thank you.
Jana Terblanche
janababezterblanche@gmail.com
+27 766 01 8957You can also read
