Let Me Comb Your Hair
During the COVID19 pandemic, artists Mika Sperling and Vasudhaa Narayanan engaged in a call and response exchange, between Hamburg, Germany and Bangalore, India. During this time, both experienced disruptions to their practice - Sperling had to prematurely shut down a show with a new body of work at Deichtorhallen, Hamburg; Narayanan cannot return to the United States due to closure of borders and Trump’s Travel Ban. Consequently, the quarantine forced them to look inwards with their practice - focusing on the language of care, family, intimacy, and the solitude surrounding their homes and neighborhoods. The exchange between them informs both form and content; exploring tonalities and emotions on a spectrum of images that are happenstance, and constructed. Often playing between the real and the manifested; the exchange has helped them isolate from the world yet connect with each other, by making images that feel emotionally present and tangible.
In ‘Let Me Comb Your Hair’, this joint body of work uses the photographic medium to disrupt the divisive and binary nature of collaborative work. The ego is an ever-present aspect of creation, more so in collaborative and visual work. In removing any labels associated with the images - about time, place, photographer we are left to explore only the images, and its relationship between us and the viewer. Some of the images are obviously distinguishable, while some more ambiguous. This push and pull between the presence and absence of the photographer is an exploration that we both wish to continue exploring through this work.
Bios:
Mika Sperling is a photo-based artist currently living and working in Hamburg, Germany. Her practice is based in photography, video, writing and sound and engages ideas and concepts of family and language. Her work has been primarily biographical where she explores her own experience as one of eight children to understand the complexities of multiculturalism, identity and place. www.mikasperling.de
Vasudhaa Narayanan is a visual artist and curator living in Bangalore, India. Her work explores the complexities of identity, domesticity and gender through conceptual photographs, sculptural elements and performance. Her work is situated within the context of an Indian diaspora, confronting ideas of otherness within the patriarchal frameworks of culture; and provokes one to question their biases towards the female abject. www.vasudhaa.com
Instagram accounts:
@mika_sperling @vasudhaa