HORMAZD NARIELWALLA
EAGLE GALLERY CABINET ROOM
15 July – 7 August 2021
In July 2021 the Eagle Gallery presents Diamond Dolls, a solo exhibition and artist’s book by Hormazd Narielwalla that celebrate the iconic figure of David Bowie.
Bowie’s shape-shifting ability to create different personae is the starting point for a sequence of 36 collages that explore ideas about identity and transformation. Working over a repeated line drawing of the singer as Ziggy Stardust, Narielwalla has created individual images through a highly elaborate form of costuming that extend the human form into a kind of abstract sculpture.
“I started the work for the Diamond Dolls project towards the end of the first UK lockdown in 2020. I feel very fortunate that being an artist I was able to continue my work during this turbulent time and that the act of making in itself is a form of catharsis. Like many people, I needed a way to be able to escape this new reality – to time travel, to be somewhere different, to be someone else. At their basis the Diamond Dolls images explore the idea of transformation. My dancing dolls are also a form of celebration. My initial training was as a fashion designer and I remain very interested by the power of outward adornment to express the spirit of the inner self.” (Hormazd Narielwalla, June 2021)
As John O’Connell writes in the introduction to Diamond Dolls Bowie was ‘fascinated by the relationship between artifice and authenticity’, using clothes and make-up to create a kaleidoscope of different kinds of identities. As with much of Narielwalla’s work the collages are made onto backgrounds of vintage tailoring patterns which are embellished with highly decorative pattern papers sourced from all over the world. The images allude to Japanese theatrical traditions of kabuki and onnagata which influenced the singer’s approach in his challenging of accepted notions of sexuality and gender.
Beauty as a form of seduction is also explored in an artist’s book developed from the project. Published in three leporello volumes, its structure echoes the architecture of the shoji screen, which can be opened and closed to re-configure space or create different viewpoints. Decorated with foiling and de-bossed pattern, the book’s pages are printed front and back to expose the ‘artifice’ of construction involved in the final images.
Diamond Dolls is co-published by Concentric Editions and EMH Arts, London in an edition of 300 copies. For further information about the publication and related limited edition prints, please view our Prints and Publications page.
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