Hi friends,
A lot has happened over the last couple of months, internally and externally. At the beginning of 2024 I got the news that I have been selected to participate in The Other Art Fair - run by Saatchi Gallery to platform emerging artists. It gave me something to focus on. I have spent the last couple of months in an intense mode of creative production, channeling sometimes the energy of the moment we’re in and sometimes my own internal landscape.
I share this, fully aware that it is a ridiculous moment to care about anything else except the oppression that is happening around the world. I share this to tell you how I am moving through it, how I am pulling myself back from the doors of despair and documenting that on my canvas, also bearing witness to myself.
I hope we can all see how the tide is changing. It’s excruciatingly slow, but it’s happening. I can see it all around me. I can feel it especially on my canvas, as the sharp, violent, discordant energy is moved and digested in soft, slow-moving shapes. In the pigment giving way to its base colour, as the ink moves and seeps through the raw canvas, every fiber of it integrating and changing shape. Creation is the opposite of death, and in that sense it is an act of resistance: an insistence that things can be changed.
If you’re based in London and you’d like to come see these pieces that have emerged during this time, The Other Art Fair will be on 7 - 10 March (You can use the code RAO20 for a wee discount on the entrance tickets) at The Truman Brewery in East London. I’ll be there.
Love,
Sana
You are not alone.