| As the Internet increases our dependence on imagined and parallel worlds, the barrier between reality and fiction continues to collapse. Our attachment to mass media and communications has enabled us to access a wealth of information and imagery that has perhaps diluted our sensitivity to the real. My work seeks to explore how we might make balance this insensitivity by creating new spaces where different structures can coexist; spaces that might allow us to return to a place of pleasure, fantasy and childhood while acknowledging the problems of the real world. How can we ever hope to engage people if we are always presenting them with escapist channels? | _thumb.jpg "Image")
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Sohaila Baluch
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Sohaila Baluch, Untitled (face), 2008. Archival digital print with decal collage, 30 x 20 cm. Courtesy of the artist.As the Internet increases our dependence on imagined and parallel worlds, the barrier between reality and fiction continues to collapse. Our attachment to mass media and communications has enabled us to access a wealth of information and imagery that has perhaps diluted our sensitivity to the real. My work seeks to explore how we might make balance this insensitivity by creating new spaces where different structures can coexist; spaces that might allow us to return to a place of pleasure, fantasy and childhood while acknowledging the problems of the real world.
How can we ever hope to engage people if we are always presenting them with escapist channels? By mixing documentary and imagined worlds, I hope to construct scenes that allow the observer to discover something about the ambiguous and unpredictable world we live in by showing them the real alongside a fiction that allows them to (dis)connect into something other.
My work has always been process-based, and I translate my ideas through either photographs or drawings. This new series of works references the Letraset action transfers/decals and the Waddington panorama transfers of the 70s. These usually involved “sets” which were background scenes of interiors or exteriors, individual or joint card panels up to three feet in width, and transfers, usually people in various costume or objects which could be rubbed on appropriately. Using my own images as well as appropriated images, I incorporate both the drawn and the photographic to create a site of convergence within my own “sets.” Texture, layering, and surface have always been very relevant within my work, and the transfers focus on this in a genuine way. Their twofold ability to be both permanent (sticking to anything) and fragile, drawn and photographic, opaque and translucent, rough and smooth, lends itself to the duality within my work.
My relationship with these transfers is based on concerns that we rely too heavily on the screen or web to provide us with sensory experiences. The physical, immediate quality of the transfers and their corporeal nature allow me to address this idea from an alternative direction.
Virtual space has become an integral part of our lives, and as the advancement of new media continues, our connection with the physical is being increasingly compromised.
