TIME
Solo exhibition by
LJ Ablola
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After almost three years of restricted mobility, social distancing, and confinement to homes and virtual environments, we are now witnessing the gradual restoration of activity and vibrancy in most of our streets and public spaces. The bustling crowd, noise, and chaos thriving in the fixtures of our cities and communities have significantly returned to their pre-pandemic state, evoking a semblance of normalcy in the conduct of everyday life. While the threat of the pandemic still looms and some precautionary measures and restrictions are still in place, the world is slowly easing its way to recovery.
This renewed vitality after a period of standstill and the optimism it brings inform LJ Ablola Sy’s latest suite of works in this exhibition. Her artistic practice has long been inspired by the outdoors in an urban setting, capturing both its familiar sights and pleasant surprises especially in the local context. In recent years, this fascination has also taken on a personal meaning for the artist. Devoting most of her time to raising her daughter and staying mostly at home and her studio, art served as her window to access and imagine the outside world. From streets and narrow alleys cramped with rushing pedestrians, to busy thoroughfares congested with vehicular traffic, to inconspicuous and obscure corners where daily life equally unfolds, she documents various sites of human experience in public spaces and recreates them in composite media befitting their complex ecology. The compositions are painted in impressionistic layers and juxtapositions of vivid colors, enriched with stitches and perforations to further craft visual nuances and intricacies and at the same time incorporate symbolisms. For instance, the threads embroidered may relate to how disparate lives briefly connect and interweave at a given moment whenever people converge in crowds. The small holes delicately cut through the surface form patterns reminiscent of seeds, a metaphor for life itself or its beginnings. In these scenes, we see how people move around in and navigate the urban jungle, how they transform and repurpose spaces for survival and convenience, or simply how they spend a day’s work or pass time. Most of these activities slowed down in the past few years but have now resumed in almost full scale.
The years of the pandemic will be etched in our minds as a time when outdoor life came to an unexpected halt, a thought that in the past may have sounded so surreal and far-fetched to many. In contrast, the images in these pieces represent the norm and ordinary, the commonplace, trivial, and fleeting. Now, these glimpses of our streets, schools, sidewalks, or public transport – once again teeming with life and vigor- become reminders of what we were detached from in the worst days of a global health crisis. They may well be the signs of recuperation the world has been looking forward to, perhaps indicating that we have moved beyond the most difficult hurdles, at least with respect to the pandemic.
