Lubna Chowdhary: Disjunctions
Gallery Isabelle, Dubai
14 November 2023 – 5 January 2024
Sign 18, 2023
Ceramic, 180 x 120 x 4.2 cm
Image courtesy of the artist and Gallery Isabelle, Dubai
Bind 1, 2021
Polyester rope, glazed ceramic, 130 x 90 cm
Image courtesy of the artist and Gallery Isabelle, Dubai
Bind 1, 2021
Polyester rope, glazed ceramic, 130 x 90 cm, (detail)
Image courtesy of the artist and Gallery Isabelle, Dubai
Gallery Isabelle presents Disjunctions, a solo exhibition by LUBNA CHOWDHARY, foregrounds the artist’s distinctive breed of disruption—of material, of tradition, of expectations. While clay and ceramics constitute her principal pursuit, she subverts the expectations of this medium by exploring tensions between the handmade and the industrial, the domestic and the urban, ornamentation and minimalism. Her hallmark uses of colour and modularity coalesce in a show that fathoms two contrasting movements: on one hand zooming out to consider structural contexts (of language, for example, or the built environment); on the other, delving into the intricacies and minutiae of overlapping (machine-made) repetitions and (handmade) intuitions. The result is a show that revels in experiment, framing a succession of tensions, disjunctions, and upended dynamics.
Lubna Chowdhary has sustained an artistic practice that demonstrates an immaculate fluency of craft and skill, with attention to material, volume, and colour. She experiments with ceramics, glazing, and painting surfaces, and establishes new relationships with other modes of fabrication.
Clinch, 2022
Polyester rope, glazed ceramic,
site specific installation at MIMA, Middlesbrough, UK
Image courtesy of the artist and Gallery Isabelle, Dubai
In Disjunctions, a collection of tensions cascade through the space, themselves contextualised within the opposing viewpoints of zooming out and closing in. Lubna Chowdhary frequently occupies a ‘wide angle’ space, considering both the (infra)structural lay-of-the-land, within which teems an intricacy of detail. Now-iconic works like Metropolis (2019) and the Islamic Biennial commissioned Endless Iftar (2023) capture both the vast and the minute in one generous gesture. The built environment looms: in Disjunctions, Bind (2023) enlists industrial materials into an exploration of their potential for art-making that not only references the systems and infrastructures of our built environment, but also the industrial conformity of our time.
Yet it is within language itself—the ultimate structure enfolding us all—that Lubna Chowdhary navigates, raising incisive questions on the nature of syntax, semiotics, and semantics. Borrowing from quotidian symbols found in the urban landscape, the artist reappropriates logos, advertising, and branding images in the series Sign (2023) and Code (2023), merging them with spiritual iconographic symbols. In the large ceramic panels, composed of individual machine cut tiles, their sleek and glossy surface is glazed in vivid hues and arranged to fit like pieces of a puzzle. In her Code paintings, she also plays with pre-cut shapes and signs, which she has found in her environment, constructed into a jigsaw of interlocking patterns and rhythmic sequences.
In Switch (2023), the artist creates a series of collages made with round sticker labels adhered to pink graph paper. The composition references histories of geometric abstraction, its patina flits between commercial excess and hand-crafted work. Each circular sticker of varying sizes is painted in subtle shades of red and applied to the surface to create a swell of cell-like forms guided by the paper›s gridlines.
For Lubna Chowdhary, there is “a short distance between thinking and making that happens intuitively – making in an unhindered way,” which results in the artist’s individual expression.
LUBNA CHOWDHARY - BIOGRAPHY
Lubna Chowdhary works with hybridity. As a precursor to her artistic career, she challenged the representation of works in Western anthropological museum collections, questioning how objects beyond Occidental historical iconography appeared outside of their original context and historical narratives. Her broad yet highly distinctive practice embraces the history of architecture, sculpture, installation, and painting, while galvanising a diversity of aesthetic references and traditions including handmade craft, modernism, diverse architectures and urbanism. In material terms, while clay and ceramics constitute her principal pursuit, she subverts the expectations of this medium by exploring tensions between the handmade and the industrial, the domestic and the urban, ornamentation and minimalism.
Lubna Chowdhary (b. 1964, Dodoma, Tanzania) lives and works in London. She received The Sir Eduardo Paolozzi Travel Award in 1990 and has since earned three Arts Council England Awards. Her work has been shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions, most recently at Hayward Gallery London; MIMA, Middlesbrough, England (2022); Peer, London (2021); SCVA Norwich; M+ Museum, Hong Kong (2021); Art Gallery of New South Wales (2020); Jameel Arts Centre, Dubai (2020); ICA, Milano (2019); Kochi Muziris Biennale (2018-2019); Manchester Art Gallery (2018). Chowdhary’s work is included in the public collections of The Government Art Collection; Art Gallery of New South Wales; Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery; Jameel Arts Centre, Dubai; Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, New Delhi; Leicester City Museum; M+ Museum, Hong Kong; Mead Gallery, Warwick; Nottingham Castle Museum; Oldham Art Gallery; Poole Museum; SCVA Norwich; and Ishara Foundation Dubai.
GALLERY ISABELLE
Unit 17, Alserkal Avenue, Dubai
