Sohaila Baluch
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MA Fine Art/Printmaking, The Royal College of Art, London |
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Artist Statement: The nature of photography is to enlarge an unstable reality, to make time stand still. For me it is the perfect medium through which I can express my concerns, whether it is by using large format photographs, installation, or more recently video and time-based work. The images I make possess quietness and are psychologically not very giving; they present an unbearably heightened feeling of emptiness often reflecting back the viewer’s own vulnerability. My most recent work Hospital Times investigates and explores the nature of institutional emptiness, and our aloneness, dealing with the tension of an absent body, the un-nerving theatrical presence of a subject not shown. Faced with this absence the lens restlessly focuses a schizophrenic attention to detail, the fold of a bed-sheet, the arrangement of curtain rings, translating them into the microcosmic landscape of delirium. A foreboding nocturnal reverie becoming a state of defence, an emotional anchor against the trauma of what may be happening elsewhere. The photographs of hospital curtains and bed sheets speak about the absence of human touch. But the folds in both bear witness to human encounters and disturbances. By photographing them in both colour and black and white at different times of day and night, and form various angles allows them to encapsulate difficult emotional moods. They become unforgiving like those situations to which they are party. The contrast between depth and surface, together with the scale and texture creates an interesting dialogue between the intimacy and distance of isolation. The effect is one of both observing form afar yet being directly in it. Whilst the photograph distances the viewer from the thing in it the familiarity and detail of that thing makes their experience of it immediate enabling them to exist in the same place as the work, in-between something and nothing. Publications: Blueprint Catalogue Komic: Issue 1/WAR Pollen Magazine Collections: Exhibitions: 2003 2002 2001 2000 1997 |
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