The image above on the left is a portrait of Indian artist Nasreen Mohamedi (1937 -1990) from the 1970s. The image on the right is a portrait of me embodying Nasreen Mohamedi before I made the trip to India to seek out her work in 2014. Next week I am going to New York to see the largest exhibition of Nasreen Mohamedi’s work ever at the new Met Breuer!

http://www.metmuseum.org/press/exhibitions/2016/nasreen-mohamedi

You can see in the six images below (of Mohamedi’s work and my own) how Nasreen Mohamedi has influenced my work. I am obviously not copying Mohamedi’s style but I have been inspired, enlightened and encouraged by her remarkable work. Mohamedi “looks” with a metaphysical eye in her delicate linear drawings and spare photographs. Her work is transcendent and sublime. As I have recorded on this blog previously, her art practice has affected me deeply. I met curator Roobina Karode (the curator of this exhibit at the Met Breuer) at the Kiran Nadar Museum of Contemporary Art in Delhi. I looked at Mohamedi’s work closely and also learned about her life story – which is wonderful, sad and compelling. The photographs that I took in Delhi in 2014 with Nasreen as my imaginary “guide” became templates for a drawing practice in my studio at home. I made these drawings in ink and graphite and gouache on a large architectural drawing board. This drawing practice is more exacting and physical than my previous drawing methods (though still not as meticulous as Nasreen’s.) One of the things I “draw” from Mohamedi is a strong sense of connection to space: architectural space, the space of my own body as perceiver and as renderer, the space of the paper, and the spaciousness of my own mind. I think this work is very feminine (both mine and Nasreen’s) and I can’t tell you why exactly.

 

Nasreen Mohamedi, Untitled, ink and graphite on paper, ca. 1970.

 

Nasreen Mohamedi, Untitled, ink and graphite on paper, ca. 1970.

 

Nasreen Mohamedi, Untitled, ink and graphite on paper, ca. 1970.

 

Sherry Wiggins, Out of India series, ink and graphite on paper, 2015

 

Sherry Wiggins, Out of India series, ink and graphite on paper, 2015

 

Sherry Wiggins, Out of India series, ink and graphite on paper, 2015

 

I stopped this specific drawing practice temporarily last fall to go to Portugal to look at Helena Almeida’s work and continue my investigations into feminine space there. I was inspired by Almeida to make new “drawings” using my own body.

 

Helena Almeida, Pintura Habitada, photograph with acrylic paint, 1977.

Discovering Helena Almeida’s work was also a revelation for me. It is such beautiful, conceptually sound, personal and feminine work. Also I just love that color blue! Almeida has used her body in her work in black and white photos often painted with the special blue paint over a span of 40 years. Almeida questions the notion of artistic space in a unique way – trained as a painter, she inserts herself in the “painting” as both material and author. I created a large body of work while at the Obras Foundation in Portugal (much of which is documented on this blog) that was emboldened and empowered by Helena Almeida’s work. My body of works from Portugal is distinctly feminine work – there is a sense of vulnerability, vitality and power. The sequence of works titled Performing the Drawing below express these qualities of a profound feminine space in a visceral way.

 

images above: Sherry Wiggins, Performing the Drawing, nine color images printed on watercolor paper, 24” x 24” each, 2015, photography by Rui Fernandes

Helena Almeida and Nasreen Mohamedi have helped set me on a course where I am discovering and uncovering a profound sense of feminine space in my work. I intend to stay on this track in my art practice. I am so excited to see Nasreen Mohamadi’s work next week – it is like looking forward to seeing a dear and important friend. Try to see this exhibit in New York at the Met Breuer through June 5^th. Also check out the short video about Mohamedi’s work on the Met website below:

http://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/listings/2016/nasreen-mohamedi

Also Helena Almeida’s big exhibit is up at the Jeu de Palme in Paris through May 22^nd.

http://www.jeudepaume.org/index.php?page=article&idArt=2484