Ala Jazayeri
Whose work are you loving these days?
For some time I’ve found myself captivated by the work of Vivian Suter. A couple of months ago I watched Vivian’s Garden (2017) by Rosalind Nashashibi, which was recommended by a painter friend of mine. She built up her studio in the middle of the jungle of Guatemala far from the hustle and bustle of the European art scene. The process behind her work as well as her relationship to nature really interests me. Particularly, how nature has become an integral part of her work. I recently went to see her work in person for the first time at Camden Art Centre. The installation of unstretched canvases hung from the ceiling and walls made you feel as if you were under a jungle canopy of abstract paintings; a canopy which both protects and envelopes you. The earthy brown and green colours on the off-white un-primed canvases are very vibrant and bright. The exhibition looks like one body of work at the same time each individual work by itself is powerful.
Varda Caivano, she was my tutor for a couple of months in the 3rd year of my BA at Wimbledon College of Arts. I think she changed my whole perception regarding painting and especially abstract paintings. The encouragement she gave me and her own work was very inspiring. The colour palette and the way that she applies paint on linen and canvas really fascinates me.
She says my paintings are like my thoughts, I make many of them at the same time.
Apart from these two painters, there are obviously many other painters from the history of art through to the present day that I always study and return to, from Rembrandt to Cy Twombly and Marlene Dumas and many others.
What book is on your nightstand?
Red Rosa - which is a comic book about Rosa Luxemburg
Bad Boy by Eric Fischl
Ninth Street Women [Mary Gabriel] - which I just started reading
Your practice in 5 #
#alwayswip
What’s on your mind?
I’m working on a couple of paintings which I think constitute a new series and which take their leave from questions involving personhood, absence and loss. I’m still trying to come to fully understand where this latest spate of work will lead.
How does the body - yours and others' - influence your work?
Coming from Iran I am interested in the different ways in which cultures and cultural practices shape and impact the way we relate to our own bodies and the specific forms of awareness and consciousness which pertain to our disparate lived bodily experiences. I am particularly interested in issues around bodily comportment and the nature of the relations one has to one’s own body and how comportments and relations can exemplify and inhabit different social and religious values, norms and ways of being in the world.
Ala lives and works in London, UK.
March 2020
