In other words, why use a hatchet when a scalpel is needed? In other words, is justice for BIPOC better served by a cop with a dastār or an RCMP commissioner who thinks that systemic racism doesn’t exist? Our political forms-and our artistic ones-need subtler inflections. It’s messy since the politics of representation are just as dangerous as white-washed and colour blind universalisms, both in art and in life. Abstraction, on the other hand, presupposes a stifling universality-a ‘pure’ and singular visual language, more connected to platonic ideals or some eternal spiritual principle than to the muddy meatspace we all live in. That is, paintings and sculptures which aim to communicate likeness to life, but representation can also be inflected in order to increase political visibility, literally to see more racialized artists exhibited and collected. Representation can be articulated as making mimetic work. If abstraction is coded as both White and male-and we can trace this back to Whiteness and masculinity situating themselves as central, normal, default, everything and everywhere-then inadvertently, the assumption falls that racialized and women artists’ purview is-or ought to be-representational. How many White guys in modern, post-modern, or contemporary art paint consciously and representationally about the specific circumstances of Whiteness and masculinity? How readily can you name 10 White men working in abstraction historically or contemporaneously, and how readily can you name 10 racialized women doing the same? Go ahead, count them on your fingers. From de Kooning to Pollock, from Malevich to Yves Klein, an entire century’s worth of artists with class, gender, and most notably race privilege, have escaped the burdens of representation, marshaling abstraction into a purportedly universal language.
You see, much of 21 st-century art history is filled with White men making abstract paintings. I didn’t know Russna then, hadn’t heard the stories she tells about and around her paintings, hadn’t yet understood how someone manages the burden of representation, juggling what to reveal and what to conceal, forging a possible path forward for the rest of us racialized diasporic femmes, sharp as fucking tacks-especially, those of us who think carefully, skeptically, and often, about identity-based politics in art. Ironing, Bored made me think of my grandmother ironing bibi’s fotă, the velvety red embroidery flattening under the weight and steam, a mostly-ash cigarette hanging from her mouth-dangerously drooping over the entire operation. My girlfriend thought it was a very ‘pretty’ painting-and her passing attraction speaks to the seduction of Kaur’s style, but all good work deserves a closer encounter, a longer breath, a deeper look. It made sense to me and yet alluded to so many unanswerable things. It was mimesis of absolutely nothing and an image of absolutely everything. That initial encounter was with a painting constructed from multiple abutting surfaces, strips of canvas, sawdust, and saturated acrylic paint. They are midway between the sun and the moon, 2020. Russna Kaur, Suddenly her lips sharpened-it was splendid installation shot.
While the art world reckons with representation, Kaur keeps on going-making work with the practiced pragmatism of the shrugging lady emoji. Though her work is situated in the realm of the abstract, she manages the concomitant baggage with intention and grace. Kaur’s work moved me, held me, and invited me in because it walked a tightrope across the complex political and visual histories of abstraction and representation. Her work was a welcome reprieve from an onslaught of poorly executed new media works and frenetic installations filled with broken things, clumsily glued back together. When I first saw Kaur’s work, I was an exhausted third year BFA student, equal parts overwhelmed and in awe, walking through offerings at The Show-Emily Carr University’s graduating exhibition. It wasn’t until much later that I understood why I felt that way. Sized at 12 feet x 9 feet, occupying a quiet corner on the top floor painting gallery at Emily Carr University, it was hard to leave, difficult to walk away. The first time I saw one of Russna Kaur’s monumental paintings, Ironing, Bored, I couldn’t stop staring. Suddenly her lips sharpened-it was splendid Russna Kaur, Suddenly her lips sharpened-it was splendid installation shot, the sky seems to be the only one to Notice, 2020.
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