Systems, Voids & Counter Narratives
How Matthew Barney, Rosemarie Trockel & Saidya Hartman influence my work
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Central to my current practice is an investigation into the legacy & tools of colonialism alongside the unknowable voids and forever silenced voices of the past. I wish to suggest counter narratives to deeply entrenched mindsets stemming from a colonial world view. To help this line of inquiry, I have selected three contemporary practitioners, Matthew Barney, Rosemarie Trockel and Saidiya Hartman, whose work I feel is exemplary and relevant to this undertaking.
In considering the works of each practitioner, I have identified two strong recurring elements: Systems and Voids. I’ll introduce the work of each practitioner addressing how systems and voids drive their practice and create counter narratives. Lastly, I will share my reflections on how their work influences mine.
Matthew Barney (American, b. 1967) is a contemporary artist & film director. Barney works from enduring narrative sources, such as a myth, and then seeds his stories within this mythic system. His signature aesthetic of pale colours, shiny textiles, plastic, flesh, iridescence & luxury-like goo is simultaneously attractive and repellent. He’s interested in the relationship between narrative and object and his films feature little to no dialogue. The overall atmosphere of them is futuristic, ancient & puzzling. Characters display a strong sense of purpose as they perform repetitive, elaborate tasks with mysterious, designed objects. As an audience we are witnessing a highly charged, symbolic system in action. Barney creates counter narrative systems using elements of recognisable patterns, forms & symbols then subverts them through material choices. It is not explicit what the characters want, need or feel. There are frequent voids of narrative information.
The work of Rosemarie Trockel (German, b.1952) presents alternative ways of imagining how we organise systems of knowledge. Her sculpture frequently has both organic and artificial qualities, defying category.She has worked extensively with botanical collections as a means to unpick how and why post-Enlightenment Westerners compulsively categorise and describe natural phenomenon. Her work then presents intentionally fractured & unfinished systems and does not seek to create certainty. She reveals, reworks and represents a system that reference, but sits outside the dominant, current system. Similar to Barney, Trockel leaves plenty of voids of information in her systems.This serves the work as a critique of the systems themselves.
Saidiya Hartman (American, b.1961) is a writer, researcher and Prof. at Columbia University. Her major field of interest is African American experience.Hartman’s pioneering and genre defying work is a direct response to the voids within archival material and subsequent voids of information and perspectives in published academic texts, namely the erasure of the lived experience of African Americans in American history. Hartman developed a writing style which has been coined ‘critical fabulation’ whereby she uses narrative to connect dots within an archive to show a lived experience — a counter narrative, rather than faceless facts.
Reflecting on the work of these three practitioner specifically using the lenses of systems and voids, has assisted me in my thinking and making of decolonising works. Firstly, I see colonialism as a system we are still living while the voids of information about how artifacts got into our museums is notable. I have chosen to replicate highly symbolic forms found in our museums and subsequently in our wider culture such as a caryatid, column and stela. I used systems of imperfect replication such as slip casting and 3D printing while playing with these forms to make them recognisable, but strange in form, surface and palette. I’ve experimented with voids as a device by making columns hollow and faces faceless. And I have resisted the urge to create a tidy narrative through sculpture after recognising the power of the largely unexplained, fractured and mysteriously performed nature of Barney and Trockel’s work.
References:
Adam Kuper, K. (2023) The Museum of Other People: From Colonial Acquisitions to Cosmopolitan Exhibitions. Profile Books.
Barney, M. and Spector, N. (2002) Matthew Barney: the Cremaster cycle. New York: Guggenheim Museum.
Cooke, L. and Trockel, R. (2012) Rosemarie Trockel: : a cosmos. Madrid], New York]: Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, The Monacelli Press.
Hartman, S.V. (2019) Wayward lives, beautiful experiments. First edition edn. New York ; London: W.W. Norton & Company.
Procter, A. (2020) The whole picture. London: Cassell.
