Basma Kavanagh, Isolation, 2020-2021
Title
Basma Kavanagh, Isolation, 2020-2021
Subject
Textile (mixed media)
Date
2020-2021
Description
Artist Statement:
In the tension of the Covid- 19 lockdown, my partner and I found some humour: Isolate? We were already isolated. We work from home in rural Nova Scotia where connection, not solitude, is a struggle. I’ve heard this echoed by many rural artist friends as the months pass. Expert in being alone and staying home, we have much to teach those for whom this experience is new and stressful. However, this enforced isolation eventually takes its toll
This is not the same as choosing to be alone. Family responsibilities and anxiety about the future affect my ability to concentrate. Stitching the isolation flag is soothing. This quiet, deliberate work absorbs empty hours I would otherwise fill with worry. Much of my work is slow; the whole world feels slower these days. As colorful threads and textures accumulate, something warm, tactile, and complex emerges from
the groundlessness of our collective state of emergency.
My art-making is preoccupied with watching and listening to the natural world, contemplating our relationships with other living beings, and reflecting on what it means to be an embodied
human animal. The developing work, a painted, quilted flag with embroidered text in English and Arabic, is to be viewed from both sides: its layered, textured front and messy back
communicating different facets of the solitary, and sometimes obscure, work of art-making, in a soft confluence of language, colour, meaning, and dis/comfort.
In the tension of the Covid- 19 lockdown, my partner and I found some humour: Isolate? We were already isolated. We work from home in rural Nova Scotia where connection, not solitude, is a struggle. I’ve heard this echoed by many rural artist friends as the months pass. Expert in being alone and staying home, we have much to teach those for whom this experience is new and stressful. However, this enforced isolation eventually takes its toll
This is not the same as choosing to be alone. Family responsibilities and anxiety about the future affect my ability to concentrate. Stitching the isolation flag is soothing. This quiet, deliberate work absorbs empty hours I would otherwise fill with worry. Much of my work is slow; the whole world feels slower these days. As colorful threads and textures accumulate, something warm, tactile, and complex emerges from
the groundlessness of our collective state of emergency.
My art-making is preoccupied with watching and listening to the natural world, contemplating our relationships with other living beings, and reflecting on what it means to be an embodied
human animal. The developing work, a painted, quilted flag with embroidered text in English and Arabic, is to be viewed from both sides: its layered, textured front and messy back
communicating different facets of the solitary, and sometimes obscure, work of art-making, in a soft confluence of language, colour, meaning, and dis/comfort.
Creator
Basma Kavanagh
Rights
copyright, Basma Kavanagh
Original Format
mixed media textile
Citation
Basma Kavanagh
, “Basma Kavanagh, Isolation, 2020-2021,” Exhibits At Acadia, accessed May 6, 2024, https://exhibitsatacadia.omeka.net/items/show/47.