Shortlist 2016 Hong Kong
British artist Abigail Reynolds was selected for the third BMW Art Journey. Her project “The Ruins of Time: Lost Libraries of the Silk Road” will take her to China, Uzbekistan, Turkey, Iran, Italy and Egypt.
Abigail Reynolds’ artistic practice is closely linked to books and libraries. Having studied English literature at Oxford University, she frequently draws inspiration from books to imagine places and moments from the past, present and future. Libraries inform the conceptual framework of her work, which investigates communal forms of identities and socio-political power structures, and many of the materials she uses also derive from libraries.
Given this deep connection to libraries and literature, it is no surprise that Reynolds’ BMW Art Journey project for 2017, “The Ruins of Time: Lost Libraries of the Silk Road,” is designed to allow her to connect the complex religious and secular narratives of Europe and Asia and to expand her current interests and working methods through a prolonged multi-continent series of visits to historic and fabled repositories of books.
The artist will trace as many as sixteen sites of libraries lost to political conflicts, looters, natural catastrophes, and war. Their tragedies date all the way back to 291 BC and to as recently as 2011. The journey will take her along the trajecto- ry of the ancient Silk Road, which she will appro- ach in two stages, starting from the Eastern and the Western end points, then travelling inwards as far as today’s conflict zones allow.
ABIGAIL REYNOLS INTENDS TO EXPLORE BLANKS AND VOIDS, WITH THE LIBRARY SYMBOLISING THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF ENCOMPASSUNG ALL KNOWLEDGE
Conceptually, Abigail Reynolds intends to explore blanks and voids, with the library symbolising the impossibility of encompassing all knowledge—lost libraries even more so. "The research I have done towards this journey privileges the known,” the artist stated in her proposal for the Art Journey, “but it will bring me to question what we understand as knowledge. I do not want to embark on a history lesson, but on a philosophical journey.” Along the way, Reynolds, an avid collector of books and images, will gather representations in various forms: 3D scans, photography, microscope imagery, written text, plans or cataloguing systems. Based on this extensive research, she intends to create a cluster of book forms, prints, collages, and 16mm film, the latter being her first attempt to work in this medium. Images, texts, and other documents originating from the experience will, after its conclusion, be included in a book—thus completing a journey that both starts and ends with the institution of the library.
In a joint statement, the five-member international jury said about their unanimous selection: “Abigail Reynolds submitted a monumental, poetic, and memorable proposal. Her articulate project links the contemporary to ancient history by researching destroyed libraries, a phenomenon that has continued for thousands of years. Her journey will take her along segments of the Silk Road, which has not lost any of its political and cultural resonance. It will be fascinating to see where this ambitious journey—which is so thoroughly rooted in her practice of translating literary materials into visual language—will take her, both physically and creatively.”
ABIGAIL REYNOLDS WAS CHOSEN FROM A SHORTLIST OF THREE ARTISTS FROM THE DISCOVERIES SECTOR OF ART BASEL IN HONG KONG 2016. SHE IS REPRESENTED BY ROKEBY, LONDON.
Abigail Reynolds
Based in Cornwall, UK, Abigail Reynolds read English Literature at Oxford University before pursuing Fine Art at Goldsmiths University
Her interest in books prompts her collages, sculptures, films and printmaking. The ideas driving Reynolds’ work are based on images from reportage photography books, her interest in networks of association and how our sense of time is affected by technology. She has exhibited at art institutions and galleries in London, Vienna, Los Angeles, Seattle, Berlin and Eindhoven.
Alvin Zafra
Alvin Zafra was born in 1978 in Quezon City, Philippines.
He graduated from the College of Fine Arts at the University of the Philippines in 2000 and won the Dominador Castaneda Award for Visual Essay. Zafra’s process of transferring the image from the photograph onto sandpaper using white stones is a meditation on the impermanence of structures and the cycle of civilizations. He exhibited at West Gallery, Quezon City, Singapore Art Museum, Singapore, and Mori Art Museum, Tokyo.
Newsha Tavakolian
Newsha Tavakolian, born in 1981, is a Tehran-based photo-journalist and -artist.
Early in her career she produced photo documentaries in Iran, Iraq, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Pakistan and Yemen and gained international recognition with work published in magazines and newspapers such as Time, Der Spiegel, Le Monde and the New York Times. Tavakolian’s exhibitions include Thomas Erben Gallery, New York, Aaran Gallery, Teheran, and Otto Gallery, Florence. In her recent photography-installation for Art Basel in Hong Kong 2016 she documents the lives of nine Teheran residents.
