MAGDALENA ABAKANOWICZ - A SPACE BETWEEN EXORCISM AND EXPOSITION.
Every Tangle of Thread and Rope - Tate Modern - LONDON. Photographed by Xiaohui Wu
Image by Xiaohui Wu for M-A (A SPACE BETWEEN) 2023.
The tapestry freed from its historic place - off the wall - suspended and allowed to breathe - like a sculpture.
Instalations hang like gothic cathedrals - mummified - discovered awaiting the next life. Once flapping now dormant - asleep - their giant wings shrouded in gravity - the fibrous strands of their being still sensitive to sensation.
A split - a slash in the seams where a giant needle missed - to meet two lips - spill the contents of an outpouring of jute - the noble rope - understood - its diagonal rhythm concealing the genetic secrets of this created species - fashioned from the very fibre of one woman.
Physical threads so thick - the irregular woven surface suggestive of the many hands of the fellowship of community construction - and yet the gargantuan scale and minimalist defiance in its sense of self and oneness -
Image by Xiaohui Wu for M-A (A SPACE BETWEEN) 2023.
Accompanying sheets of inky charcoal renderings - evidence happenings once volatile now still - indelible and urgent in pigment on paper.
Eye witness depictions made in a state of exorcism to communicate with a traumatised past - reawakened by the instinct of will.
Like a Shaman who communicates tangibly - A bust by an unknown artist from Papua New Guinea displayed in the shadows - a corpse of a semi-decomposed form - a terrifying face to ward off evil - this created object seems to contain the soul of the work. - Deteriorating and yet alive - not with a heart that beats but a rhythm of possession. - It’s Mohicans of tarnished feathers sweltered and oiled with time - the skin ravaged and exposed within it’s protective case - eyes permanently open - unblinking and ringed with lashes so thick as to brush - a being created from materials not of its birth but of its resurrection.
Black lungs - once pink now charred - the vessels and veins of precious life - wretched and exposed in an area only sensed before - behind a smooth skin - now removed - flayed and heaped.
A giant's garments hang by a thread - threatening to snap and engulf the viewer like a fly trap devouring it’s prey. The fearful shadowy interiors of these caves - create glistening imaginings of arachnid eggs awaiting mass hatch.
The suspended situations or 'Abakans' sometimes move slowly - kinetic - awaiting possible volatile unraveling - from silent suspension to a catalan of reverse creation.
Behind a corner - a centuries-old tree severed and bound in metal shackles - as if in an operation theatre - to splint in order to correct - or an alter to sacrifice. It’s metal bed reduced to the essential - the bark skin - dry and dead. - Like a mother - the tree reminds us of a body where life began - sacred and remaining - preserved and yet vandalised through control.
'We live in times which are extraordinary because of their various forms of aggression. Today new danger exists around us as if everyone were against everyone. Agora should become a symbol, a metaphor about the particular historical moment in which we need each other, in which we want to rely on each other more than ever.' Magdalena Abakanowicz.
Magdalena Abakanowicz - 'Every Tangle of Thread and Rope', Tate Modern - Until 21 May 2023.
Thank you Jennifer MacNeill at Tate and Benjamin John Hall for the recommendation.
Images: Xiaohui Wu