Long Range Studio Visit

Elizabeth Langford + Soraya Hamlaoui

This conversation introduces the artists Soraya Hamlaoui and Elizabeth Langford who discuss their multi-disciplinary practices and the temporality of their chosen materials. They also talk of the effect the landscape around PADA had on them whilst on residency and the healing, transformative qualities of art.

Elizabeth Langford On magical thinking - can we try to define this? Or does magic, by its nature, evade definition? Now that I have the phrase I feel certain that it is an essential part of my process! Does magical thinking play a role in your practice?

Soraya Hamlaoui Maybe the word magical qualifies something that belongs to an independent logic.  According to Nietzsche "Man's maturity is to have regained the seriousness that he had as a child at play."Just like the artist creating his own rules when playing. In my practice I would say that it almost always starts from a consideration and contemplation about an object, its materiality (or non materiality in case of words for example), its power, its shape, and then, a sort of dance between thinking and feeling starts and leads me to something I can show, in the end. But I also do believe (more and more I let this idea grow) that an artwork has an aura that you can name a magical presence , because it is one of the last things that (still) escapes from usefulness in our shared paradigm. Something related to holy or to the incorruptible. 

EL The inescapable paradox of the artwork as something useless, but essential in that uselessness. I see art making as lawless territory where anything is possible. I am curious about the sculpture as a part of the installation, and what order it tends to take - is the sculpture born out of the installation, or the other way round?  

SH That's a very good question. I think, depending on the project, the sculpture has a potential independent existence and strength, but it has been meant to be part of an ensemble, just like we said in a preceding conversation, like a constellation made of different elements that can also exist independently, but they exist thanks to that ensemble... We could also compare it to an eco-system. Is there such a local co-dependance or co-existence or a form of dialogue or mirror relationship between your works in a series or in your work in general? 

EL Yes, I think both. The paintings evolve out of each other in one way or another, and the last few years I have been trying to make the process of the pigment making more a part of the realized works. I imagine it will take the form of installation and/or performance. I often have a frustration that the works never feel completed, always in process but am learning to accept this, “nothing ever is, everything is becoming”. 

SH I totally see what you mean. Maybe it is something universal and that - as artists - we have to deal the most with the question of finitude. I also decided at a certain step of my evolution that it was something to assume and accept. 

And also if you widen the view on the working process, you start to consider the process as a sort of performance that could be already documented. That really depends on the choices we make at each step and what we decide to show and how to show. What do you think about that ? 

EL I agree completely - the editing part, deciding what to reveal. During a residency with Winsor and Newton our mentor Mathew Gibson likened the creative process to an iceberg, in that what is visible is just the tip; beneath the surface is a vast mass unseen.

I like what you mentioned in one of our first conversations about trees, as individuals that act and move. Even saying those words brings me into a different relationship with time, slower, contemplative, measured by seasons.

SH Yes, I think in both of our works the question of temporality is very present, as the practice is an important part of the story. 

The time dimension is so determinant, to slow down the process, you need to enter in a « meditative » temporality ( independent from any other type of temporality). And also I recognize in my own operating mode (or belief system as we said before) that I need to go back and forth, to start something, and then forget it for a while, and then what appears stands out clearly. I relate this to the notion of contrast that is so important to you.

 I remember we mentioned “The Tao Te Ching” after talking about contrasts and the fact that things (even opposites) "appear together" in the world, according to ancient Chinese thinking. 

 EL I wonder if there are two different times happening here, the notion of “performance” suggests a time that it occupies, it is an event with a beginning and an end. A sculptures’ relationship to time might be different. The notion of performance infers motion, whereas sculpture tends to be static. 

SH Can you tell me more about your relation to contrast? Is it something you like to make appear in your work? Or a way, a process, an operating mode? Maybe both? 

EL I feel there are two ways - contrast or harmony and that perhaps harmony is at the end of contrast. At the moment my way of seeing and understanding is defined by contrast - blue/orange, heaviness/lightness, fast/slow. I suppose it is a sort of belief system, or as you say “an operating mode”, so it inevitably finds its way into my work. In my practice, the gathering, grinding and research are slow, and the eventual mark making is fast and decisive - a release. 

How do you feel about that with regards to your work? Also, it would be nice to discuss alchemy, in relation to your practice.

SH Alchemy oh what a beautiful term. Alchemy is a very powerful concept / notion / idea to me. It opens the possibility of transformation. In both our practices there is something about transforming, and facing this huge contaminated area near PADA studio was exhorting me to evoking the healing or transformation process through shamanism (or magical thinking) at least a healing intention. Did it have such an impact on you ?

EL There was so much to engage with - I was most caught by the pigment Caput Mortuum (Latin for “dead head” or “worthless remains”), a by-product of sulphuric acid manufacture, covering the ground of the site. It was an interesting oversight, in a place where industry reigned and nothing was wasted. I was also investigating Chrozophora tinctoria, with the support of the chemists at NOVA University who had recently discovered the plant pigments’ molecular structure. A favourite experiment was modifying the colour from purple to blue, achieved by suspending the extracted pigment over the urine of a drunk older man. Chrozophora is quite particular as to where she grows, preferring the fallow, waterless fields of Granja in Alentejo. The earth of the surrounding area was a bright red oxide, rich in iron. The works I made responded to these three elements, the Caput Mortuum, (which the chemists kindly tested to confirm its chemical composition - it is mostly safe but best to wear gloves and a mask when handling it), Chrozophora tinctoria, and the earth she grew in. 

SH Imagining humanity returning to shamanic, magical beliefs, after realizing there is eventually nothing more left is part of the options belonging to an anticipatory science-fiction idea. That's a thought I have had when making sculptures for a while. That in the eventual context of a global collapse, when there would be no more access to resources, no more industries (like in the post-sovietic times in Russia) are we just going to survive or is this survivalism form of life accompanied by a healing process through magical acts? It reminds me of Joseph Beuys argument in 1970 that humanity without art would degenerate within 2000 years.

I wonder if you have this in mind when creating? I mean, do you consciously relate your practice in the role of art in that context of collapsing?

EL Not consciously, but that is inevitably part of the process with natural materials, the range of reactions is vast and often results in “failure”, though not in the pejorative sense. 

SH This context of post industrial collapse, we see it in some areas of the world, and some cyclic crises remind us of that reality: resources are finite. There are many responses, collective actions like this symbolic image of making gardens in the ruins of capitalism is also a transformation dismantling process with a shamanic meaning in a way. 

EL I want to mention “liminality”, or perhaps “thresholds”: I wonder what relationship your practice has to these words? It does strike me as having a relationship to magical thinking, the liminal space seems to be a place where this kind of thought can grow.

SH Yes, I do like the term threshold, because it also evokes hospitality, that place in between, where you can give access to something, but that keeps some important parts of the mystery. 
Indeed, like this idea of a space where another sort of thinking can grow. Can we call it emotional thinking? Intuition? That place related to subconsciousness and dreams, the night part of us? What's your relation to that? 

EL “The night part of us” (I have had this written on my mirror ever since you said it!) - this feels so rich and exciting, a place where feeling takes precedence over seeing. It reminds me of the “Night Rider” series by Chris Ofili - scenes of a jungle in darkness, our vision limited to silhouettes and subtle shifts in colour, leaving the viewer to determine the rest for themselves. 

This feels so rich, full of the implicit. I think it is where a lot of the practice occurs, the less concrete part at least. The act of making for me is very physical, I tend to push myself and the painting to our limits.

Thank you to Elizabeth Langford and Soraya Hamlaoui for discussing about their experience at PADA.

Elizabeth was a PADA Resident in 2020 and Soraya in April 2021.