Embodied Abstraction and Portraiture: Making Their Mark IV
In this section, artists look at the body through the lens of abstraction, employing experimental and subjective perspectives.
Installation ViewShah Garg Foundation
Embodied Abstraction and Portraiture
Artists like Lynette Yiadom-Boakye and Senga Nengudi challenge traditional representations, while Tschabalala Self, Jenna Gribbon, and Rina Banerjee empower the female body and subvert conventional notions of beauty through innovative forms.
AfterwordShah Garg Foundation
Timeless figures
Inhabiting a world of their own, Yiadom-Boakye’s figures are difficult to locate in time or place. Her characters appear at ease in settings full of a calm sense of inaction.
Unburdened by the modern world
Yiadom- Boakye sees her figures as unburdened by the modern world: “They don’t share our concerns or anxieties. They are somewhere else altogether.”
Creating based on lived experiences
In her multimedia piece Sisters, Tschabalala Self captures a tender moment between two siblings—a young woman and a child—embracing affectionately. The older sister gazes protectively as the little one playfully steps on her foot, drawing from Self’s own lived experiences.
SistersShah Garg Foundation
Hand in hand
Black women are central to Self’s work, embodying powerful ideas rather than real individuals. She calls her figures “avatars,” reclaiming the narrative around Black women's bodies.
Honoring Malcolm X
The sculptures for which Barbara Chase-Riboud is perhaps best known are those dedicated to the assassinated civil rights leader Malcolm X (1925–1965), produced from 1969 to 2016.
Envisaged as funerary steles, the works are not intended to represent Malcolm X in any literal way. Instead, the artist made them “in memoriam” of a “historical icon whose life radiated far beyond the politics of the temporal.”
Malcolm X #17Shah Garg Foundation
Alive and celebratory
Malcolm X #17 is an object that celebrates light, movement, and material union. “The silk material is motion,” Chase-Riboud says. “Each strand is alive. The polished bronze is light, always reflecting the noble material and sublime materiality.”
The Demon MenagerieShah Garg Foundation
Focused observation
A fundamental aim of Cecily Brown's work is to encourage concentrated looking.
A deliberate unraveling
“One of the main things I would like my work to do is to reveal itself slowly, continuously, and for you never to feel that you’re really finished looking at something.”
The Demon MenagerieShah Garg Foundation
Between figuration and abstraction
While she considers herself a figurative painter, Cecily Brown is particularly interested in the moment at which a figure breaks down into something less recognizable. "I’ve never wanted to let go of the figure, but it keeps wanting to disappear. It’s always a fight to hold on."
Unpacking political issues through materiality
Banerjee’s work has long tackled fraught political issues without coming across as heavy- handed. Instead, the artist identifies historical problems and opens them up through material investigations.
It Rained so she Rained (2009) by Rina BanerjeeShah Garg Foundation
A meaningful acquisition
Notably, this work is the first piece Komal Shah acquired as part of the Shah Garg Collection, at a Christie's first ever auction of Indian and Southeast Asian art.
Intimate portraiture
Jenna Gribbon's paintings often capture her partner, Mackenzie Scott. Whether in natural, everyday moments or in dramatic, theatrical settings, these works showcases a diverse range of artistic expression and emotional depth.
RSVP Untitled (1978) by Senga NengudiShah Garg Foundation
Exploring elasticity and feminine form
Inspired by her pregnancy and the elasticity of women’s bodies, Nengudi began to experiment with used pantyhose in 1974. She suspended pairs from the ceiling, stretched them between walls, and filled them with sand to allow gravity to exert its force.
“I am working with nylon mesh because it relates to the elasticity of the human body. From tender, tight beginnings to sagging end...My works are abstracted reflections of used bodies.”
Continue exploring the collection in Making Their Mark V: Mythology and Spirituality.
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