Toba Khedoori
Australian (Sydney, Australia, 1964)Untitled (Rooms)
Khedoori begins each of her immense yet delicate artworks by laying stretches of heavy rag paper on the floor. She brushes these panels with a thin layer of hot, clear wax, giving the surface a translucent and antiquated feel. Her method deliberately traps elements of the studio — dirt particles, footprints, fuzz, and pet hair — that stray onto the otherwise clean surface during waxing, so that the finished work recalls the process of its own creation.
After stapling the waxed paper to the studio wall, Khedoori incises an image into its surface, which she then painstakingly fills in with subtle color. Here, fragments of receding rooms hover in the center of the waxed field. It feels like an architectural drawing, yet the lack of detail and the sense of stillness and solitude lend the work an abstract, otherworldly quality, as if it were a trace of a memory or a daydream.
Keywords
rooms, doors, empty, rectangles
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