unsw

 z5163113 - Dana Hubraq

[dhubraq]

Instillation idea for Assessment 3

Obviously the screens would be the same size - or I’d like them to be projected at a much larger size. 

(the print out of my reductive work is in grey because I don’t have a colour printer - unfortunate since the whole point of the work is the colour!) 

[dhubraq]

Expansive painting - Gif. 2

‘Vladimir Putin and an Unnamed Circassian Noblewoman’

Animation 

Dana Hubraq

2020

The second half of my expansive painting, this time focusing on a modern Russian figure. 

[dhubraq]

Reductive Painting

‘#c18f79′ 

Digital Painting 

Dana Hubraq

2020

The process for this painting was really enjoyable. First, I collected as many images of circassian people into one painting. Then I cut out bits of their skin, and blew these bits up to almost pixels. I made a collage out of these shapes and colours, resulting with this. 

Then digitally, I found the average colour of the image, which happened to be #c18f79. I felt like this was an interesting way of using collage to make a reductive painting, but I almost felt like I was working with the same intent in mind as I have when I’m working on the expansive gifs. I guess it’s because I’m doing the same thing - reducing the complexity of race, history and culture into something much more simple and perhaps ignorant. 

[dhubraq]

Expansive Painting - Gif. 1

‘Boris Johnson and Dmitry Milyutin’

Animation 

Dana Hubraq 

2020

For my expansive artwork, I decided to do two seperate gifs which warp famous/historical Russian and Circassian figures into “grotesque,” low-art, cartoons. Here I wanted to have this aesthetic perversion of recognisable, respectable figures to mimic the vast cultural and physical losses that the Circassian community has underwent since the Russo-Circassian war. The backdrop is a painting of the Caucasus mountains by Russian painter Ivan Aivazovsky, just after the end of the war in 1864.

[dhubraq]

Kazimir Malevich Black Square (1913) © State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow

My inspiration for my reductive painting works on the basis of colour. In Black Square, Malevich infamously depicted and reduced the whole of society, culture, and art itself into a single colour. I aim to do this kind of extreme reduction digitally as I have done with my expansive work as a metaphor for the cultural diaspora the Circassian community has experienced both in reality and in the virtual world. I would like to find away to reduce a colourful multitude of online images of Circassian people into one singular, representative colour. What comes into play is the problematic belief of older generation Circassians who archaically believe in the white “purity” of Circassian people, when in reality, most Circassians today are mixed race. 

[dhubraq]

I have realised now that my experimentation with the expansive painting is strongly influenced by Joan Ross’ work, and I think I’ll continue along this path. Here I’ve mixed the bodily nature of cartoon with the stoicism of the photorealistic, which I feel like has made an interesting result. Making only part of the figure cartoon-like is something I’d like to keep working on. 

Making a series of gifs, which have these figures become more animated. Kind of like the “cutout animation” style in certain cartoon shows. 

[dhubraq]

Week 8 - Expansive Approaches

This week’s reading resonated with my working on the expansive painting - I found that the “grotesque” or the generally unaesthetic is what I found when researching art made by circassians. They are usually extremely kitschy or just “amateur” paintings of people in traditional garb, sprinkled with typical circassian iconography. I tried to draw caricatures of my own cousins to replicate this, emphasising certain stereotypes (apparently, circassian girls put on too much eyeliner). This is an amateur work I found that in particular inspired my own drawings: https://www.deviantart.com/hamzeh-kalimat/art/Circassian-Warrior-211090633. I reached a point where I wanted to make a cartoon of sorts, kind of like the ones you would see in newspapers.

I’ve been reading up on circassian history as of late, and all I found were stereotypes - there’s the image of the innocent, shy, long-haired girl and the masculine, aggressive circassian man. I decided that through this expansive work, I want to make use of the digital space to best express how this whole community has been reduced to stereotypes, now almost exclusively shared via the digital world. For the next experiment, I will mesh the cartoon with the realistic, as I have in previous experiments. 

[dhubraq]

Using my assemblages as a point of conceptual reference, I tried to combine all the conflicting thoughts/images I’ve come across while finding these memes and traditional paintings. I’ve gone down a bit of an information hole and found myself confused with the historical facts and myths I’ve found. 

Instead of portraying fact, I decided to focus on my own knowledge of my heritage, which is unclear and undeveloped, tainted by popular culture and time. I used a picture from the early 20th century of a Circassian woman (her identity and where the photograph comes from is unknown, which unintentionally fits the conceptual purpose of this work) which I seemed to be drawn to. In the back is another traditional painting of the Caucasus mountains (where many Circassian tribes lived) by a nineteenth-century Russian artist. 

I used a popular meme (the spidermen) from the account mentioned before to signify the cultural mess that is associated with what it means to be a modern-day Circassian. 

I translated the text into Circassian and put it at the top of the artwork. It’s in very broken and incorrect Circassian, sourcing from my little knowledge of the language and the internet - it is, unfortunately, a dying language. 

In terms of what kind of reductive work I can make from this week’s exercise, I aim to focus on the semiotic power of popular Circassian imagery, (such as the image of the gentle Circassian woman in traditional garb) and how to best represent it as reductively as possible (colour, shape). I think I’ll look at the Circassian flag as a point of reference for this.   

For the expansive work, I aim to follow Joan Ross’ examples and continue working with the effect of overlaying and intermingling key images to create interesting otherwordly works. 

[dhubraq]

Week 7

My first assemblages were mainly from things I found around my room, including a ribbon I’ve had since childhood. I used some quick ink paintings I made a week or so ago of ancestral figures, and overlayed them with modern items including a “meme” and a magazine cut out. These are the first two I liked, but I decided to move on to trying out digital assemblage - keeping in mind the work of Stezaker and Ross. 

This first one is an image of a painting by Franz Rouband, a Russian painter who traveled with the Cossacks around the time they were pillaging Circassian villages in the mid-nineteenth century. I overlayed a meme by a small account popular amongst modern-day Circassians like myself, which interestingly enough, through humor, embodies the mass sense of diaspora and anxiety that permeates Circassian communities. I played with the warping of the image instead of having it be dead straight on, which I felt made the overall work more confronting - especially in the way the meme leans over the figure of the Cossack. I’m not sure if I like it, though. 

Another example. I tried to line up shapes/line, establishing more of a relationship between the traditional painting in the back and the meme. 

This one is slightly more personal. Here I’ve juxtaposed an extremely patriotic, almost kitschy, painting by Faruk Kutlu with an old postcard advertising Sydney, more directly communicating the effects of the dispossession my ancestors experienced. I like the aesthetic of this one more so than the previous assemblages. 

[dhubraq]

John Stezaker, The trial (1978) 

Going through the reading and slides for week 7 got me thinking about just how powerful assemblage can be. I’ve previously dismissed it, associating it with boring classroom magazine cut out activities, but I’ve seen it in a much more different light as of recently. 

John Stezaker’s use of assemblage is in particular what interested me. Stezaker blocks out certain parts of stills from films from the early 20th century with other images. Here he uses a still from a 1940s drama, blocking out the central part of the image (where all the characters are looking to) with an idyllic postcard of a waterfall. The juxtaposition between the supposedly low-brow (the cheap human drama) and the high-brow (nature, the sublime) and the meanings that can be extracted from it is reminiscent of the discussion from this week’s reading. 

What is most interesting about this work is that it doesn’t embody the strictly reductive (or the simple/good) or the expansive (the dirty/bad, ornamental) but rather highlights how cultural/psychological processes can deem art in any form as foul or ideal. 

Joan Ross, The claiming of Things (2012) 

This is a digital animation by Joan Ross, an Australian artist that is primarily interested in colonial narratives. Ross utilises the method of assemblage (colonial-era paintings of Australian landscapes and victorian figures, as well as fences and other modern fixtures) in a similar way in order to communicate her intents. 

Ross’ is work is a thought-provoking example of expansive art that I feel I could draw some inspiration from for assessment 2. 

[contemporaryartdaily]

Calida Rawles at Various Small Fires

[dhubraq]

Week 6

The use of tone here really supports how the painting is depicting an underwater kind of scene. The most noticeable points of tone variation would be the bright lines on the arms and the lightest parts of the dress.

[dhubraq]

Experiment 3: XXII-1

Taking a bit of a turn from the last experiments. 

Putting complementary or near complementary colours in close proximity creates what the reading deems “vibrating boundaries.” I really liked this result and could see myself using it in the future, only because it makes a pattern that would otherwise have been uninteresting really gripping to look at. 

[dhubraq]

Experiment 2: XIII-3

The bezold effect at play - the additions of white/black outlines make the background colours seem darker/lighter when they are actually the same. This is particularly interesting to me because it made me think of different ways to bring out or subdue certain parts of a painting. The bezold effect would be useful to use in that instance. 

[dhubraq]

Week 5 - Colour 

Experiment 1: VII 

A bit of a twist on the chapter on subtraction of colour - rather than looking at how one colour behaves against differently toned backgrounds, I wanted to look at how an overall pattern behaves against different corresponding colours. 

With the green, it seemed to be darker. With the peach colour, it seemed to be lighter. Looking at it, it seems to be similar to the “optical mixture” or “bezold effect” discussed in chapter XII. 

[dhubraq]

Assessment 1 - Tonal Self Portrait 

Dana Hubraq

2020 

Chai tea on watercolour paper 

30 x 42 cm

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Assessment 3 Bibliography

- Jacobs, H. (2014). The People Of Russia's 'Forgotten Genocide' Return Home To Sochi Ahead Of The Winter Olympics. [online] Business Insider Australia. Available at: https://www.businessinsider.com.au/photos-of-sochi-russias-forgotten-circassian-people-2014-1?r=US&IR=T [Accessed 23 May 2018].

- Jaimoukha, A. (2014). Circassian Customs and Traditions. 2nd ed. [ebook] Center for Circassian Studies, pp.5 - 17. Available at: http://www.circassianworld.com/pdf/Circassian_Customs_and_Traditions.pdf [Accessed 24 May 2018].

- Keating, J. (2014). Slate’s Use of Your Data. [online] Slate Magazine. Available at: http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_world_/2014/02/05/the_circassians_and_the_olympics_did_the_age_of_genocide_begin_in_sochi.html [Accessed 24 May 2018].

- Mca.com.au. (2018). Artists & works. [online] Available at: https://www.mca.com.au/artists-works/ [Accessed 17 May 2018] 

[dhubraq]

Assessment 3, Final Work - ‘Sochi and the Olympics’

Watercolour, Acrylic on Canvas Boards 

Prompted by the idea of “perception,” my three experiments were conceptually based off how some can perceive specific cultures as outlandish whilst others see them as familiar. Imant Tiller, Sosa Joseph and Franz Rouband’s respective ways of painting influence the first experiment, which saw my reflection on my own unusual Circassian culture. I drew out reenacted pictures of Circassians taking part in culturally specific activities, splitting them into Tiller-esque panels and using obstructing lines, which represent clashing and differing perceptions of cultures. I gathered that I didn’t have enough time to paint people, and decided on a landscape instead. The second experiment included printing pictures of typical Circassian landscapes, and drawing obstructing lines on them with oil pastel. It revealed that using oil pastels would not be ideal, as the lines were messy and transparent. The third experiment, in combination with research on the controversy surrounding the Sochi 2014 Olympics (since it was built on the land of the Circassian Genocide of 1864) is a split up watercolour painting of a Sochi landscape, which more directly represented the clashing perceptions synonymous with the Sochi Olympics. The watercolour wasn’t what I liked, but I decided to keep the panels. The resulting final work is made up of 12 canvas panels, which depicts a typical Sochi landscape that was home to the Circassian Genocide. The colour varies in each panel, so that each represents a different belief about Circassian heritage and culture, and in particular its relationship to the Sochi Olympics.