Lina Iris Viktor: Some Are Born To Endless Night- Dark Matter

This is the first major show in the UK by Lina Iris Viktor which is currently on show at Autograph in Shoreditch and one that I was very eager to see. Viktor came came to my attention through the legal battle that she had with the rapper Kendrick Lamar who used designs which were very similar to hers in his video All the Stars. The works appear to be explorations of and meditations on black womanhood in which Viktor is both her own muse and model, emphasising her blackness by painting her skin even blacker, like the figures in paintings by Kerry James Marshall (here and here). "My whole project working with black exclusively began with this idea that you're not supposd to use black in your work. Students are taught that. What does that mean? Why is it so hated? The way we think about darkness, it's  ominous. What does it mean for black people to be aligned with this idea? And can you make it beautiful and arresting?" The blackness of the photographs is tempered by the use of gold leaf. References to the work of Gustav Klimt are inevitable given the use of strong geometric shapes in gold leaf used as a decorative backdrop to frame the female form. The pictures also bring to mind the similar imagery of a naked black female amid lush greenery in John Farleigh's wood engraved illustrations from George Bernard Shaw's 1932 book of short stories - The Adventures of the Black Girl in Her Search for God (and Some Lesser Tales). 

The ground floor of the exhibition contains works which are solely black and gold which have a richness and certain decadence about them. An installation of several large latticed screens titled The Black Ark are inspired by the Liberian fishermen's nets of Viktor's African heritage.

The upstairs gallery space is painted in an intense Majorelle blue which Viktor chose for its intense frequency. Cameras weren't allowed in this space, but the following two pictures are exhibited within the blue space.

Lina Iris Viktor: Some Are Born To Endless Night - Dark Matter
until 25th January 2020
Autograph
Rivington Place
London
EC2A 3BA