The Felt and The Told On Anoushka Akel
At first I thought Anoushka Akel’s paintings were bodies. Small, square bodies made of canvas. Oiled, rubbed, stained and stroked so they might take on the buttery smoothness of skin. And like fleshly bodies, these canvas bodies show signs of wear and tear (AKA living), are bruised, marked and flayed, scraped back and painted over; purple skin rubbed with balm, treated carelessly and then laboriously healed.
The first time I visit her Auckland studio, Akel is tenderly buffing the grainy, reddish surface of a painting with a soft cloth dipped in linseed oil. The studio is new to her, one of the many boons she has been afforded as the 2018 recipient of The C Art Trust Award―a grant of $50,000 bestowed upon an outstanding mid-career artist, enough to support her practice for a full year. The next time I come by, our conversation is punctured by the loud bite of a staple gun pushing new holes into an already pockmarked frame. Just like fleshly bodies, Akel’s paintings shimmer between signification and objectification, can be treated violently or caressed. As if to illustrate this point, some of the paintings in Akel’s studio are held carefully off the floor, resting on strips of wood, while others lie desultorily on their backs beside an enormous rainbow bloom of This desire to strikes me as fundamental. Here is a practice where nothing goes to waste, where ideas don’t just stick around for a season but are interrogated deeply, their potential expanding and dispersing over time and through experimentation. It is also a familiar desire, for it is one Akel shares with many writers and researchers, with other species of this genus who search for material in disparate places, finding common threads and feeling called to weave them together, give them new form. Sometimes, it is only by holding everything in view that the threads can be twisted together, made to hold meaning.
