Order over Chaos

Jennifer Birrell-Latachi’s artistic works often deal with the cross-cultural identity struggle of being an Australian and raising a bi-racial family. She’s currently working towards her Master’s degree in Arts and Cultural Management. Her work within Expanded Field Painting is inspired by classical Islamic artistic notions of colour, light, symmetry and line as a metaphorical carriage to investigate the socio-political constructs that divide cultures. Order over Chaos is a ‘Living Painting’ under the Painting in the Expanded Field genre. Creating chaos through painting over 36 meters on canvas, the artist then used photographic methods to select the collisions of colours and form in the paint, representing moments of beauty in the clash of cultures between modern abstract expressionism and traditional Islamic art. Orchestrating order represented by symmetry, the works were then hand animated, creating a living painting. The work is synchronised to traditional Arabic Oud provided in collaboration with French-Tunisian artist Abderraouf Ouertani. The works are designed to be exhibited in two display screens but due to the lock down the original work was edited to be played online.