Emma Murphy
Pi Artworks: London 55 Eastcastle Street, London, W1W 8EG
27 February- 31 March 2014
Pi Artworks: London 55 Eastcastle Street, London, W1W 8EG
27 February- 31 March 2014
Evocative lingerie and cannibalised childhood furniture were among the sculptures in Bangladeshi artist, Tayeba Begum Lipi exhibition at Pi Artworks in early 2014. Never Been Intimate was the artists’ first solo show in London and the exhibitions second incarnation, which debuted in the gallery’s Istanbul location in late 2013.
Consisting of fourteen highly ornate, garish sculptures and wall hangings, these works were amassed using, paradoxically luminous and tactile, razor blades and safety pins. Personal loss and the repression of identity permeated each work in this show. The artists medium: blades and pins are no ordinary everyday apparatus. They have been specifically fabricated for the Lipi’s practice. The custom made blunted blades were constructed from stainless steel; the redundant safety pins are brass immersed in vibrant gold plating.
Blades are bound up in potential latent violence. Viewing them out of context immediately constructs an identification with danger. For Lipi, however, they reveal a strong association with birth, not death. In her home town of Gaibandha, the artist recalls overhearing demands for a new blade to be rushed from the market each time a woman was in the throngs of labour. This, the artist articulates, was the only tool used to separate the child from the mother.
Consisting of fourteen highly ornate, garish sculptures and wall hangings, these works were amassed using, paradoxically luminous and tactile, razor blades and safety pins. Personal loss and the repression of identity permeated each work in this show. The artists medium: blades and pins are no ordinary everyday apparatus. They have been specifically fabricated for the Lipi’s practice. The custom made blunted blades were constructed from stainless steel; the redundant safety pins are brass immersed in vibrant gold plating.
Blades are bound up in potential latent violence. Viewing them out of context immediately constructs an identification with danger. For Lipi, however, they reveal a strong association with birth, not death. In her home town of Gaibandha, the artist recalls overhearing demands for a new blade to be rushed from the market each time a woman was in the throngs of labour. This, the artist articulates, was the only tool used to separate the child from the mother.