Camouflage
2019
This project is a digital mixed-media approach using photography and drawings.
I like the idea that everything is surreal, that everything is possible. When I lie in the bath, I don't want to be bound by the laws of nature. I want to instantly be transported to another time and location, bathing in the water under the moon's light. Where would I go if I were not a prisoner of time and space?
In the outfit, I am not myself. I have no identity. I put on another skin. Thus, the work aims to achieve the impersonal.
The work focuses on the body, yet it is about escaping the boundaries placed upon us by the body. The imagery is not bound by any rules. There is no limitation.
The drawing I chose as the skin was all created by an outpouring of unconscious feeling. They are the skin. There is no face to read emotionally. The body itself will show the feeling. Anybody can be this person. It is an invitation to feel emotions beyond the need for an identity.
The imagery, the body, is not romanticized. It is real. It is not a glorification of form. It is a homage to the transcendent normal.
There is an aspect of camouflage in work. It explores the ability to become one with the space one occupies. Perhaps this is a longing born from the life of a person away from home, not in their comfortable surroundings. In a sense, it's about the ability not to stand out. To not be 'The Other.' When one is not at home, camouflage becomes attractive.
Text by Dr J.M
As meaningful as creating this collection has been, and as happy as she is with the final manifestation, this project actually started with a series of nightmares in 2019.
She processed these nightmares through a combination of journalling and the creation of these pieces. As with much of her work, she had only a tenuous conscious understanding of their significance at the time of their creation. More insight was to come later.
The piece shows a sleeper in almost a full fetal position. So long as she sleeps, she does not have to contend with the uncomfortable fact that she is contained within a small box. Something calls to her to awaken. It has no discernible identity of its own but wants her sleep to end.
Upon waking, we see the unmistakable desperation to escape the parameters of the limiting box. She, in her wakeful state, is more defined than before while the onlooker mirrors her form at all times.
Her desire has led to her successful escape. While she is lighter and certainly less distressed, we see her sitting listlessly in an environment of growing dimness.
Existence outside the box is free and with endless potential. But fear of the new can lead to an initial recoil and desire to regress to the safety of the known, if untenable. There is no going back, however. Once this journey is started, there is only one direction available – forwards.
Put another way: the only way is through. Through what exactly? Well, it’s hard to be precise when referring to the surreal. But perhaps one answer is – through the space of liminality. This is the space between the old and the new, the known and the yet-to-be-known. Navigating this space can feel like wading through a kaleidoscopic hallway that bridges parallel dimensions.
How long does one stay in the liminal space? How long is a piece of string? There are many forms to try on and different positions to evaluate. It’s not simply a matter of choosing arbitrarily and coming to terms with that choice. Rather, it’s about being open to trial and error until a choice eventually reveals itself as valid. At times it can seem confusing, but an emotional resonance will help separate the signal from the noise.
A times on this journey, despair can find us. But a guiding intelligence can help us. It can even impress upon our hearts and minds a symbol of love and protection.
She sees this collection as a representation of a transition she is still in the process of undertaking. Her earlier work referred much more heavily to her past and the forces that shaped her personally and culturally. This collection, however, is about the present and the future. It is about becoming.
I do not see this collection as a prelude, however. It’s not something that will be ‘completed’ once the space of liminality is left behind and a new form is identified. The real insight is something of a paradox. It’s that once we are ok in the space of liminality, once we learn to play there, we become empowered to make the right choice if and when we desire to.
The bodies presented within Nasrin Golden’s works are conflicted. Human bodies, specifically female ones, are subjected to forces beyond their control and shown in intense emotional states. While these are phenomena that may feel familiar to many of us, Golden takes a step further by amalgamating physical, psychological and political influences into her practice through layers of drawing and photography.
The works situated within Golden’s exhibition Camouflage are indelibly marked by the artist’s personal experience and a continuous grapple with the construction of identity. This is true not only in terms of gender but also in respect of racial, cultural and geographical heritage, and as someone with roots in two vastly differing countries, Iran and Ireland. The apparently thin membrane between physical and digital ways of being in the world, exacerbated by our accelerating dependence upon technology as mediator, are inherent within the work too, asking us how we live, where and why.
Take, for instance, a work from the Camouflage series made in 2019, a piece presenting a grey-white figure contracted into a foetal position, lying in an empty, dirty bath. The prone figure is smoothed, hairless, faceless, featureless, with her function, purpose and almost all colour stripped from her body. A burnt-orange orb above moves the scene away from realism to a more dreamlike (or nightmarish) context, arguably pushing the work into the field of speculative or science fiction, a prime space for discussions on belonging as writers including Margaret Atwood, Ursula K. Le Guin and Octavia Butler testify.
In other works, we find the figures that populate Golden’s strange worlds stretching outwards, muscles taught in the act of reaching. Two pieces from the series The Liminal Space produced in 2020-22 show this same female figure replete with deer antlers in one example, and a large, open lily in place of her head in another. Organic symbolism locates the body in relation to environmental adaptation and to dialogues circling the ‘wildness’ of women, while a mixture of geometric patterning reminiscent of electrical circuitry and overtly ‘designed’ paisley patterning bring the spheres of the digital and the decorative into this rich mix.
Golden’s figures are often alone, occasionally paired with a mirror-image figure that asks questions about the binaries that identity is often reduced to. In other works, much larger groups of people are set into relationship with one another. In one of these, seven figures are shown with their arms spread in front of them, as if beseeching. Their legs are tucked up behind as though they are swimming. Within the piece, we find the distinctive textures and shadows of rock formations in strong sunlight, rough surfaces contrasting with these suspended bodies. The environment is cut up and replaced in repeating patterns, creating an odd sense of movement in this ambiguous monochromatic arena. Figures are part-hidden, part-revealed. Highlighting the continuous negotiation of our bodies in and through different spaces and places, and in relation to other people, this work, in particular, is one which feels indicative of Golden’s practice.
Anneka French is an artist, writer, editor, and curator based near to Birmingham, UK.
Text forms the core of her artistic practice. Current work considers the vignette in terms of its connections to family, motherhood, and the post-industrial landscape.
Anneka's wider practice includes curatorial work and art journalism for publications such as Art Quarterly and Photomonitor. She currently holds the role of Curator at Coventry Biennial. Formerly, She was Editorial Manager at the contemporary art magazine this is tomorrow and Director at the regional visual arts network New Art West Midlands. She has worked on projects with Tate Modern, Aarhus Billedkunstcenter, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, Ikon, Grain Projects, and Photoworks, among others.
To camouflage oneself is to conceal, hide or distort the “I” in an attempt to redirect, misdirect. It is more than just rerouting attention; it is an attempt to present in a way which as if there is nothing to be seen in the first place. Hiding in plain sight. Camouflage is also a creative act, it forces its agent to become more engaged, more tactile with the combination of materials to achieve their desired invisibility. Lastly, camouflage employers are keenly aware of their potential perceivers, the purpose is to elude another, an other who is not “I”. Nasrin Golden’s iteration of camouflage distorts these pillars and asks, what if camouflage wasn’t just for the other, but also for the “I”. What if this method of warping and distorting the body wasn’t a way to hide, but to reveal what may be underneath the surface, reveal an infinite potential. When we are camouflaged into a landscape, Golden’s work posits, perhaps we are not making ourselves smaller and less visible, but rather bigger, wider, expanded. Camouflage thus is the act of realising that we have possibility and opportunity outside of our immediacy. Outside of all expectations. Allowing flesh to melt into every-thing.
Rethinking the factors that give us identity is, for me, a major point of philosophical consideration within Camouflage. If we consider the things that make us us. The things that make us recognisable, not just to others but to ourselves. To name a few: hairline; face shape; presence or absence of freckles; skin texture; beauty marks; the shape of our cuticles; the clothing we decide we like and suit us; and so on… In the outfit as Golden exercises within Camouflage all personal identifiers, all the things that would allow acquaintances and loved ones point us out are gone. The slate of the body is made clean. It allows for a rebuilding, re-thinking of identity. The only thing that may remain, perhaps, is stature. Ones height and weight cannot be hidden by the outfit. However more importantly perhaps is one’s body language, the way they hold their shoulders or lean into their posture. Golden solves the problem of this identifier. Her poses are ‘unnatural’, not the kind of poses you’d expect to recognise of anyone. Leaning on one knee, other leg stretching behind. Hands on hips. Gaze beyond the shoulder. It is not only the outfit that allows for a clean slate to achieve the impersonal, but also the movement, the stillness, the tension. The final layer of removing identifying features are the methods employed to create Camouflage. Using digital mixed media ranging from photography to drawing, Golden adds the one last layer. The final nail in the coffin to self-hood to achieve a potential infinite. The “laws” of gender, race, class etc. are reset. The work is about the body, yet it Is about escaping the boundaries placed upon us by the body.
The problem: being bound by identity. The solution: camouflage. The how: the outfit and mixed media. In this way, Golden is always eluding the chase to be pinned down. So, what now?
What this valiant effort achieves is infinite, but I’d like to posit what it does best is a democratisation of expression. In the outfit, Golden achieves the impersonal. The clean slate. However, I believe that Golden does not attempt to achieve nothingness. In everyday life expression is usually read on the face, through words and gestures. Our expression seems most poignant towards the top of the body. Highly concentrated on the head and less concentrated as we move down through the body. Camouflage’s strength is in its democratisation of expression. Sadness is not just read on the face or in crossed arms. It is read full bodied, a foetal position with a straight on gaze. Joy is read in a wide palmed stretch of the arms and twist of the body. Acceptance is read through a postured serene sit on a stoop. Escape is read through an arm on the wall, an arm on the floor. Power is read through a lean forward, high gaze, arms and hands splat out from behind as if ready to pounce. The body, from thumb to bum has equal weight in reading intention and expression.
In this democratisation everything is surreal, everything is possible. Camouflage is a body of work which takes seriously this possibility, but also takes seriously the boundaries that our bodies can place on us. Whether that be conscious or subconscious. Escaping those boundaries can allow also for multiplicity. One does not have to think of themselves as a lone being. Multiple works in Camouflage exhibit a multiplicity of bodies. Some bodies appear to be copy and pasted ad infinitum while others seem tactically aligned, in a beautiful pattern of unison. Another work exhibits forty-plus bodies on a similar scale throughout but in different postures, different arraignments but somehow all retain a oneness.
Aporia is a concept which caters to the reality that we often hold contradicting beliefs, thoughts, or feelings at the same time. A type of logical disjointment. Camouflage’s array of figures can be seen through a similar concept. A type of aporia. All present bodies are equal, equally important, equally expressive, while they might seem contradiction. The work achieves the impersonal in order to reach a deeper truth of the personal. To scrub away superficial expectations which can often shackle so many in Neo-liberal society. Once the impersonal is achieved, Golden’s drawings which are overlayed as a kind of second skin over the photographs are created through an outpouring of unconscious creativity. Reminiscent of automatic drawing as spurred on by the early 20th-century surrealist, this form of art-making suppresses the conscious mind in the act of making in favour of instinct. Our instincts are a truer form of self, of “I” than our conscious, logic-orientated minds can ever be. Everything is surreal, everything is possible.
Golden’s body of work Camouflage was produced over the course of three years, and it is evident in the final images. The photographs with drawing overlays are contemplative, punchy, and full of potential. Not just potential for the figure(s) in the work, but for the viewers. It invites us as the viewers of this work to take on this outfit for ourselves and contemplate how truly wide we can become when we leave our identity at the door. Camouflaged; not just from others, but from ourselves.
Sara Muthi is born in Transylvania, Romania, Sara Muthi is a Dublin based artist & curator. Working primarily within concepts of painting & performance, she studied Fine Art Painting & Visual Culture at the National College of Art & Design, graduating with first class honors.
Sara Muthi is a writer and curator based in Dublin.
Text by Monika Sapielak
Camouflage by Nasrin Golden is a selection of photography-based mixed media works created between 2019 and 2022.
Starting with small pieces combining black-white photography and gentle drawings, the artist explores the freedom of a hidden identity. Bare of any individual features such as facial expression or sex, the protagonist seems to reconnect with themselves by focusing on simple gestures and poses.
Being a body or in the body that has been transformed into a ghostly figure free from having to be someone, free from appearing in a particular way and free from having to conform to anything, seems to be the theme here. Lightness combined with a deep self-reflection is reached by losing the burdens of the Self. Doublings, foggy spaces and shadows watching over the protagonist revoke a slightly surreal feel of a journey into someone’s uncanny subconscious. The added drawings, flower heads and antlers connect the figure with the realm of nature, lending her animalistic, feathery or floral features and making their outer skin an ornamental shield protecting them from the outside world.
An emancipatory process has been captured here. In the larger works, the selfless figure becomes more expressive, experimental and playful. The experiment on freedom also becomes an aesthetical one. Multiplying and geometrical patterns mixed with expressive body poses get expanded into wallpapers of abstract shapes, with the Self ironically multiplied and hidden at the same time. The figure becomes cheeky in their hiding and gains new colours as it disappears. Read more on CFCP website
Artistic Director
Centre for Creative Practices
Monika Sapielak is an award-winning Arts Manager, Curator, Producer, Lecturer and Mentor, with 25 years of work experience in the European Cultural Sector.
Co-founder and CEO of the Centre for Creative Practices (CFCP), she is a recipient of the Merit to Polish Culture, awarded by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland, as well as Main Awardee of the Arthur Guinness Fund.
Monika is dedicated to developing and delivering ambitious artistic programmes that are inclusive, socially engaged and supportive of the integration of migrants. She is also a strong advocate for the promotion of European values, as well as increasing the participation of disadvantaged members of society.
