Framing The Image-World in 2020

By Fredrika Olausson

Even in the thick of lockdown, the mind wanders freely, and cannot be reined in by restrictions and physical barriers. Cloistered in our homes for several weeks, we found ourselves immersed in a shared sense of the surreal, one heightened, in London, by the empty and airy streets occasionally broken by the sirens of ambulances travelling back and forth to local hospitals. Many people, myself included, have been fortunate enough to experience the effects of Covid-19 as a largely potential threat to our health, livelihoods and security – a threat visually defined by absence, by everyday normalities and places vanished. This has been a pandemic in which the ‘spectacle’ is manifested as one of lack and limits. Our restricted ability to comprehend the pandemic visually has, in turn, circumscribed our ability to comprehend it cognitively. More than ever, we’re aware of our reliance on images as tools for making sense of the world. 

In her essay ‘The Image-World’ from the ground breaking On Photography (1977), Susan Sontag reflects on our instinctive interpretation of images as a material object; while we conversely believe we can understand material reality through images.    

Perhaps it was the extensive image vacuum, and the resulting sense of detachment from reality, that made me embark on an aesthetic and philosophical journey with the aim to stay connected to the physical and visual world. Tellingly, the voyage started with a book void of any images – Derek Jarman’s Chroma: A Book of Colour (1993). The first chapter covers the colour white – the deceitfully neutral shade, which encompasses the full spectrum of colours. Such a detailed investigation of one colour made me re-explore artworks I thought myself already familiar with, such as the swirling monochrome expression of Robert Ryman, white marble statues from antiquity, or the stitched white canvases of Nicholas Hlobo. But my eye also fell on neglected phenomena in everyday life, including the intricate details on the whitewashed façades of terraced Victorian buildings in my neighbourhood, and the slices of history they contained. 

I decided to explore artists, objects and movements who challenged limits of perception, artistic technique and subject matter. This led to conversations with artists, one of the first being with Sophie Westerlind, a Swedish artist living and working in Venice. While spending lockdown in Italy, her sense of the surreal had translated into the below dreamy composition of a nude, surrounded by an abundance of flowers – the kind of spring staple that could only be acquired at a crowded, bustling market. Due to the strict lockdown measures in Venice, Westerlind came to treasure the flowers as precious, almost forbidden objects that sparked her longing for colour and a delicate kind of opulence.

I have also come to appreciate and admire artists I did not know previously. Yumna Al-Arashi was born and raised in the United States to a Yemini father and an Egyptian mother. As a photographer, working between still and moving images, she aims to challenge perceptions of Muslim women, through a rich visual vocabulary that encompasses close-up portraits, landscape photography and intimate nudes. Her pictures are poetic and yet frank. Take, for example, the photographs of women from the series ‘Northern Yemen’ realised in 2014, one year before the war broke out. The veiled women stand out as powerful statues, expressing their agency and character through their postures as much as through their position within the dramatic landscapes. The encounter with these works unsettled my distanced perception of a war-torn country and triggered an engagement, dislodged from preconceived impressions.

 The framework for my exploration of these artworks and artists became FRAMED, a collection of images with a focus on contemporary women artists working in all nations of the world. From the start, I knew I wanted FRAMED to break the tendency to absorb images that align with a familiar, comfortable visual and creative context. Globally, women artists are still marginalised or underrepresented by institutions as well as commercial galleries. Through FRAMED, I would like to consider the rich spectrum of creativity and visual culture produced by women. In his 1996 work On Identity, Amin Maalouf conceptualises identity as a journey, in which our beliefs, individual taste, sensibilities and affiliation are developed over time. Part of this journey is no doubt taken in the form of images, and I hope FRAMED can provide a rich and fertile experience both for myself and others alike. 

A frame isolates the artwork, holding it aloft and aloof, marking its distinct spatial placement, while simultaneously creating a separation from the beholder. The rigid structure transforms the picture into a solid object to be revered, albeit at a distance. Concurrently, the frame formulates a focal point of the image, allowing the viewer to engage intimately with the work. During a time in which distance has been enforced, we might get closer to images and start to dismantle the limits of perception we’ve been used to for so long.

Fredrika Olausson is a researcher at White Cube in London and founder of FRAMED. View the evolving FRAMED collection here.

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