Singing a New Song : Nicky Nodjoumi

17 Oct-6 Nov 2020

Overview

Taymour Grahne Projects is pleased to present Singing a New Song by New York - based artist Nicky Nodjoumi opening all day (between 10 AM - 6 PM) on October 17. Politics has never been more at the forefront of the collective consciousness since Nicky Nodjoumi moved to the USA in the 1970s. This experience ignited a lifelong process of making and his own enduring dialogue with activism, identity, and the human condition. To this day, Nodjoumi clips images, figures and body parts from newspapers, creating collages that lay the groundwork for his large-scale paintings. In his latest body of work, the state of 'being' is examined in a world that is rapidly decaying, an outright reference to the current ecological and climate developments. Mankind’s relationship to and its reliance on the environment is historic. If dependence can be defined as conditional or contingent on some other entity - it is when these circumstances come into jeopardy that the conversation becomes inherently political. Nodjoumi's scenarios address cultural power structures, examining how fear and force maintain rigid understandings of our habitat within a hierarchical system. As an artist responding to contemporaneous happenings, expression is rooted in truth rather than the quest for power. This practise is liberating, and allows for human vice to be held up to the light in ridicule. By painting and twisting recognisable imagery, Nodjoumi interjects cohesive depictions rooted in reality. Slice by slice, component by component, symbolic figures are reconstructed and exposed as the farce they are.