Golden Fishes in the Dark Sea 2006

Curator: Twins Seven Seven's "Golden Fishes in the Dark Sea" from 2006. It's a mixed media piece. What are your initial thoughts? Editor: The patterns are incredible! It's almost overwhelming but in a good way. All these repeated shapes and colours make me wonder about the materials. What kind of paints or inks did he use to achieve this effect? Curator: That's a crucial question. Focusing on materiality is key. Looking closely, you can see layering, almost like a build-up of cultural memory embedded within the artwork itself. What can you tell me about that repetitive act of mark making and its connection to traditional Yoruba art or maybe even textile production? Editor: Hmmm, Yoruba art... I know it is traditionally very spiritual and symbolic, incorporating things from nature, using colour, but this piece is particularly patterned. Textile production… like resist-dyeing methods or Adire patterns, perhaps? Curator: Exactly! Consider the labour involved, not just in creating the image, but in the societal context. Think about the significance of handcraft in Yoruba culture. How might the act of painstakingly layering these patterns reflect on that culture and also resist western concepts of "fine art"? Editor: So it's about elevating these materials and labour, saying they’re just as valuable as any fancy oil painting made in Europe? It changes the meaning if you think of it like that, moving beyond just decoration. Curator: Precisely. The materials and process themselves are making an argument about value and cultural production. They tell a story. Does the dark background evoke something like loss, an allusion to cultural erasure as it intersects with creative adaptation, perhaps? Editor: I never thought of it that way, about this push-and-pull, it makes me appreciate the materials even more and how they help tell its story. Curator: Seeing the art's story, one stroke at a time. Material tells that story and is so often left unheard.