Percy, our newest EAC Intern from China, writes about one of his favorite pieces on display in the exhibition Azadeh Hussaini: ArchiWalls. The exhibition is on display in our main second floor gallery from January 15 - February 16, 2020.
From my perspective, the pursuit of art, setting aside the form is never to prevent most of the people from enjoying the unique value in this field because of the boundary of professional technical knowledge, but is to provide a path for them to share the common love, spirit, and faith among the humans while spotting the meaning or inspiration from certain artworks at the same time. Thus, as almost a layman in art, I will fix more of my attention to the artworks which could leave the space for me to get the motivation to freely enlarge and deepen my thought.
After roughly scanning all of the artworks on display in EAC, I found myself being fascinated most by the work Life Stream by Azadeh Hussaini. The piece of work is made of newspapers and acrylic paint on the wood panel. As the style of this artist is always non-figurative, I do have the right to add my own understanding to the artwork. At first sight of the artwork, I instantly think of the volcanic activity. To be frank, from both the materials themselves and their process and composition could I explain for the relationship between the form and meaning. Absolutely we could imagine the cross-section of a stack of newspapers as the stratigraphic distribution, and the main colors of the artwork, black and dark orange, mimic those of the granite and magma. What is more, the feature of the newspapers, being light and fragile, makes it easier to embody the natural state of the strata.
Then it comes to building the connection between the form and meaning. As is known, every time a volcano's actions, especially erupts, light and heat will be released. And for most of the advanced animals including humans, light and heat are usually supposed to exist in their habitats. Consequently, the volcanic activity could be related to life. Honestly speaking, when we make some research on geologic history, we will discover that every species evolution is accompanied by or is the result of fierce geologic activities. So thinking at the point of view of humanists, the volcanic could represent the power of life and its activity happens to reflect the operation of the lifestream.
To briefly conclude, the form of nature has some deep inspiration to us living in modern times. No matter how high the developing level we have reached, we should never neglect the greatness of life, which could never be replaced by the techniques or the other elements.