Beschreibung:

Laila Tara H Thief! Thief! Thief In My Closet!, 2022 Natural Pigment, Watercolour, Velvet and Handmade Hemp Paper Signed verso 15 x 10cm (5¾ x 3¾ in.) About Laila Tara H (b.1995, London) is an Iranian-British artist whose practice stems from the visual language of Indo-Persian miniature painting. Laila's Iranian heritage, and years spent moving through continents have inspired the language through which she articulates her own history + life. Utilising historical techniques, her works explore and experiment in scale and negative space. Symbolic forms and multiple, concurrent narratives punctuate the space. Detailed figures suspended amidst contemporary urban scenes, disjointed limbs amidst delicate foliage, are all arranged in stark, startling compositions that defy stylistic cannons and stretch boundaries. She often cuts and folds paper, puncturing and destabilising space to introduce new three-dimensional depth and shadow play. Her works, most often painted on hand-made natural hemp paper sourced from Sanganer, India, explore a range of emotions, and create a charged surface where the tension between form and formlessness; the object and its surrounding emptiness, plays out. The figures explore our sense of perspective and time, and are interlaced with deeply personal narratives. Laila mostly uses pigments that are either naturally derived, or prepared using traditional methods from found materials-these range from crushed red London bricks; walnut ink; madder red pigment; deep blue lapis lazuli from Badakhshan province of Afghanistan and India, sourced from Florence; ochres from Iran, collected from the island of Hormoz. Education 2017-2019 MA (distinction), The Prince's School of Traditional Arts, Miniature Painting Select Exhibitions/Awards Solo / Two-person: 2022 In Studio, Drake's London, New York, United States 2022 Twisted toes, tangled ears (with Anousha Payne), Public Gallery, London, United Kingdom 2022 duck duck goose, Purdy Hicks Gallery, London, United Kingdom 2021 Vexilloid, O Gallery, Tehran, Iran 2021 Am I?, V.O Curations, London, United Kingdom 2021 Sky-Circles (with Anusheh Zia Siddiqui), Indigo+Madder, London, United Kingdom Recent Selected Group: 2022 The body we are in, Confer-Karnac, London 2022 Future Fair, Cob Gallery, New York, United States 2022 Drawing Now Fair, Purdy Hicks Gallery, Paris France 2022 London Art Fair, Purdy Hicks Gallery, London 2022 ASSEMBLE, V.O Curations, London 2021 Slow Burn, Indigo+Madder, London 2021 Cruel Intentions, Arusha Gallery, London 2020 Casa Balandra Open Studios, Casa Balandra, Mallorca, Spain 2020 Nourishment Projects, V.O Curations, London 2020 So Good So Close, Numeroventi, Florence, Italy Statement about AOAP Submitted Artwork There's a moth in the cupboard. It's eaten through all the wool and all the silk. There's a moth in the cupboard and I can't get it out. Now that the moth turned velvet red, I sit by the fire and burn all that's left. ____ My painting practice for the last few years has stemmed primarily from Persian and Indian Miniature painting. My adoption of the tradition started as a means to leash myself to my lineal heritage, both by use of technique and medium but also by the active rejection of the western art power structure that has largely shunned non-western production as craft and inspiration. This is symptomatic of the larger geo-political power structure that physically dislocated and dismembered the majority (and most important) of the manuscripts. I say this while noting that tradition is an unstable term, especially when it's being used to cover half a continent and many centuries and is an evolving, thing. With the understanding that tradition is both unstable and unhinged now that it's existing entirely out of its original physical context - not entirely unlike my own biographical existence, I'm interested in the deconstruction of its aesthetic framework. To expand on the former, I am practicing the tradition outside of its original na