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Elegant shapes, intriguing twists and strikingshades light up the work of artist Rana Begum.
Artist Rana Begums father emigrated to England in 1985 from an obscure village in Bangladesh because he wanted his family to have a better life, one unmarked by hardship. When he now sees his daughter doing hard labour to make a living, it bewilders him.
To this day, he says: "Why are you doing this? This is not what women do. Using machines and working with metal, cutting wood and stuff, this is not what girls do"/ chuckles Begum. Hes like, "Look at you, youre so exhausted. Its not good for you." And I have to tell him that actually it is good for me, it makes me happy. My parents arc puzzled that I can have a career and make a living from this.
By this. Begum means art. Begum is part of a growing circle of British Asians that have resisted the parental push toward conventional professions with steady and considerable salaries.
A little less than a generation before Begum, British - Asian musician Nitin Sawhncy trained as an accountant despite the fact that his musical talents had been obvious since childhood. Begum, on the other hand, has degrees in painting from the Chelsea College of Art and Design and the Sladc School of Fine An. She never considered studying anything else. I realised that art was something I was really good at. Everything else, I was really crap at."
Begums decision to become an artist seems particularly unconventional when you keep in mind that she grew up in a Muslim household. Iconography is anathema to Islam and this has, over centuries, developed into a rigid mistrust of figurative art in particular. Begum was very aware of this while growing up.
Through my GCSEs and A - lcvcls, I really did like representational art and I couldnt understand abstract art at all, she says. I was a figurative artist to start off" with and everything I did, I used to hide under the bed because I couldnt show it to them. She found her connection with abstract art while on a foundation course. She realised then that the figure didnt actually interest her; colour, form and lines did.
In the early 2000s she met her partner, sculptor Nathaniel Rackowe, and began to develop her distinctive artistic language.
Rackowe and Begum were both students at the Slade and met through a part - time job. Id always been fascinated by sculpture, but I think I was also afraid of it, says Begum. Seeing how Nathaniel works gave me more and more confidence to push my work and take that leap. Today, Begums art is an intriguing hybrid of painting, sculpture and installations. Made up of bold lines and solid shapes, her works are minimalist and striking for their use of geometry and colour.
There is a subtle synergy between Begums distinctive visual language and certain basic principles of religious Islamic arc The emphatic geometry of her style, with the attention to straight lines and precise angles, shares a connection with fundamental components of the elaborate decorations seen in mosques. And even though she approaches it from a decidedly secular perspective, Begum readily counts traditional Islamic art as a major influence. One of her most memorable experiences was visiting the Cathedral - Mosque in C6rdoba in 2007 and seeing its famous striped arches.
Its so beautiful the way the simple form and shape can be repeated to create a space like that, says Begum. In stark contrast to this strongly Islamic tradition, other influences that Begum lists include the work of modern artists like Sol LcWitt, Donald Judd and Agnes Martin. The impact of these artists use of grids and solid colours and their manipulation of materials is obvious in Begums work.
Her immediate inspiration, however, is the city. In Begums art arc intriguing representations of urban sights. Safety jackets of construction workers, road markings, the geometry of signage - such are the visual images that Begum abstracts to create her work. An awkward clash of colours glimpsed in signs or the unexpectedly elegant alignment of shapes in everyday objects like fences or barricades is stripped down to its basics to reveal a pristine abstract.
Begums favoured materials include paper and extruded aluminium. Shes also used coloured adhesive tape in the past. Ive always been fascinated by how much you can push a material in terms of getting something unexpected out of it/ says Begum. In her hands, paper appears more dense and solid while aluminium loses its metallic quality and seems malleable enough for origami.
In many of her works, there are revelations for the viewer. Sec it from one angle and it looks like a flat, monochrome block. Shift a little and colours, shadows and dimensions emerge. When I realised you didnt have to be in one position to view the work, it was a really exciting moment, said Begum. It meant the viewer can discover something new every time they walk around the work. Begum experienced that sense of discovery herself when she saw one of her works in a clients house, bathed in natural light. Since her studio has no natural light, Begum was transfixed by the sight of her creation becoming something new with every shift of sunlight.
Begums other great fascination is colour. She describes her practice as an investigative process, researching the interplay of form, angle and colour. The scries of works she produced in 2009 for The Third Line gallery in Dubai explored the relationship between black and other colours. The credit for this goes to her son, Jibril, who was then a few months old. I was doing loads of paper studies. Id show them to Jibril and he would react to each one, says Begum. His reaction to black and bright orange and green was quite different from the rest. Intrigued by this, Begum began working on a scries that explored contrast. Instead of absorbing the brightness of other colours, black actually served to add to their vibrancy.
Her next set of works. Fractured Symmetry, shown at Londons BischofT/ Weiss gallery last year, seem diametrically opposite with the extensive use of white. In reality, the germ of this scries lay in the black - thcmcd show. What I hadnt realised with the black pieces was how much of the colour is reflected on to the white wall, says Begum. I realised I was getting more of an interaction with the other colours with the white.
For her debut show at Amrita Jhavcri gallery in Mumbai, Begums paper studies, the starting points for many of her works, will be on display, as well as a selection of black - and whitc - themed pieces. It sounds like a mishmash, but I am hoping it will flow/ says Begum. Ultimately, its about experiencing the work because this is how I sec the world.
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Color in the interior