Sniff …metasis
Noni Kaur – 2022 – études vivantes
“The impactful, zestful painted cellular maps are based on interior biosystems that expand outward, displaced and swallowing up patrons in a microbial world that often goes unnoticed in daily human life.”
My practice explores my cultural history and how particular materials are adapted or transformed through use in different spaces/environments. A cultural practice in India and Singapore is the art of rangoli – the act of using coloured materials to decorate floors in domestic and public spaces. Traditionally made from powder pigments, flowers, rice, or sand, rangoli designs act as a revelation of beauty and the acquisition of auspiciousness around significant events and festivals.
My practice also explores my cultural history as an intersectional woman of color and how particular materials are adapted or transformed through use in different spaces/environments. The work is an exploration in materiality, rituals, assimilation and bridging gaps of the human and post-human environments. while tracing the agency of cellular, plasma and parasitic forces in both human and non-human worlds.
I explore cycles of life and death, ephemerality, nature through medium explorations. These result in vibrant, colorful, fleshy and fluid natural depictions of cellular play in the unseen environment. The impactful, zestful painted cellular maps are based on interior biosystems that expand outward, displaced and swallowing up patrons in a microbial world that often goes unnoticed in daily human life. It is a platform for critical engagement, creative interpretation in experimental, progressive and impactful artwork. My works are live conversations that are about lived experiences.
Exhibit Works
Sniff …metasis, 2022 by Noni Kaur. Mixed media, hand dyed coconut, pigments, mylar, inks.
About the Artist
Noni Kaur
Noni Kaur, is an award-winning multidisciplinary artist, educator. Kaur’s works are an embodiment of her response to intersectional identity across cultures and communities. Her immersive, reactive, multi-sensory installations bridge gaps between gender, culture, the body and the nonhuman world, through her expansive, topographical landscapes of desiccated coconut installations Kaur’s intersectionality through her heritage result in her bold cellular mapping works stemming from being a Singaporean woman of Punjabi descent in Canada.
Kaur’s work has been featured in international venues including: the Havana Biennale, Cuba; the Asian Art Biennale, Dhaka, Bangladesh; the Fukuoka Triennale, Asian Art Museum, Japan; White Columns, New York; the Henie Onstad Kunstenter, Oslo, Norway amongst others. Kaur lives and works in Toronto, Ontario.