TO SPEAK FOR THE MUTE
ABOUT THE EXHIBITION
20 January 2015 - 23 February 2015
Gitler & __, New York City, New York
To Speak for the Mute from Indian artist Soghra Khurasani, marks the artist’s first solo exhibition in the U.S. and her first time exhibiting with Gitler. Melancholy, violent, and pastoral all at once, the vibrant reds that populate each of Khurasani’s landscapes assume the form of clustered blood cells, which in turn masquerade as fields of roses, poppies, or flowing lava, cutting through and pouring over fields like hemorrhaging veins that have reached their breaking point. The allconsuming reds—while delicate and refined in their detail—reveal how something beautiful can assume the shape of something horrifying as it spreads and infects its host.
The surgical process of woodcut printmaking naturally lends itself to Khurasani’s themes, suggesting an approach that is both masochistic and cathartic, yet largely free of anger. Despite the noticeable absence of people in these compositions, Khurasani’s color fields rely on internal human anatomy as much as they do the numerous recent atrocities that have caused so much bloodshed and rendered so many citizens mute in her native India.
