Untitled (041A7764), 2024
29.7 x 42.0 cm
This work is by Salha, 16, who often works with Aisha, 13 and Nadia, 14, together as a team at Streetcolors. They did a workshop with a photographer friend of Karine Wehbé’s, the founder of Streetcolors, where they had to photograph their environment, create an album, and do some printing. Wehbé points out that you can see the result of that workshop in their paintings because, since then, they had started making patterns that are almost like textiles, working with shapes and stamps, and creating a whole universe each time. They’re reserved and structured, and they never missed a single session with Streetcolors. They created and played together a lot, and were very happy.
Medium: Painting
Frame: unframed
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This atmospheric painting of two stacked fields of near-black and purple uses indexical marks to create a cosmic experiential space. We see a a surface of the two fields separated by a horizontal band that reads like mist or a distant horizon. Across the whole painting are tiny flicks and bursts of white in different scales, instantly evoking a starry night sky.
The arcing brushwork is broad in the dark purple top part, contrasting with the denser and more erratic strokes in the darker bottom half. Both squeezing in the mixed tone of middle horizon band, which is rendered with a soft long horizontal stroke. The splattered stars seem to emerge from a chance-flicking wrist that animates them with kinetic motion, bringing the otherwise controlled surface to life. So we get a nocturnal scene full of life in an empty landscape that is expansive and gathers in at the edges.
Process
This ink and paint on paper work is made in the same way as most children's at Streetcolors Beirut; sat down, bent over, and standing over the work and through several sessions, and developing styles that are their own with specific sets of forms, colours of interest, and patterns distinguishing them from one another.
They are supported by the volunteers who help them handle their tools and prevent them from creating a violent mess. Children who started making artwork with them have found a balance in their mental states. Those who started out frozen and unable to speak found the ability to expand their scope and began making friends; and those who started out extremely violent and aggressive became more settled over time.
Visual echoes
The stacked colour zones reminiscent of Rothko’s rectangles are overlayed with the scattered flecks recalling Jackson Pollock all-over field where no single spot is privileged, except here it’s anchored by the central band, merging the the minimalist colourfield framework with abstract expressionist style: sublime boundless space indexed by the bodily act of making.