09 Aug 2017

Automythography: Mequitta Ahuja, Kambui Olujimi, Kaveri Raina, Ato Ribeiro, Alex Yudzon

Anastasia Tinari Projects

Reviewed by Alan Pocaro

"Automythography" casts its curatorial gaze upon cultural heritage as a source of form, technique, and creative inspiration.

In Journeyman II Mequitta Ahuja uses a pallette of earthen hues to depict a mythical self-portrait rafting down an abstracted river. Her works anchor the exhibition with a mystical, John Graham-like quality. Kambui Olujimi's six portraits of his late mentor in Walk with Me act in a similarly ethereal way.

Other artists emphasize the communicative power of materiality in their works. While Ato Ribeiro repurposes discarded wooden scraps into relief-like depictions of kente cloth. Kaveri Raina deploys the course weave of burlap to create incongruously light abstractions. Alex Yudzon embellishes his mementos of Soviet childhood with the humble sunflower seed.

Taken together, these artworks constitute an atlas of specific background and experience universalized by art's transformative nature.