Nasreen Mohamedi

Dancing Brick have been invited to do an installation performance at the Milton Keynes Gallery this weekend, in response to the works by artist Nasreen Mohamedi in the exhibition

Nasreen Mohamedi: Notes
"Reflections on Indian Modernism"

Indian artist Nasreen Mohamedi produced a highly personalised language through drawings, photographs and diaries from the 1950s to the 1980s. The works Dancing Brick will focus on in the perfromance are what some consider her classic works, from the 1970s and 1980s: small scale geometric drawings, devised around the grid. These works, drawings so intricate and technical they remind us of an architect's blueprints correspond to the utopian planning of Milton Keyens and are strong emblems of modernist art and design. The drawings are highly technical but delicate, evocative at once of complex musical scores and intricate stitchwork and soft textile weaving.

For our performance we have also drawn our inspiration from Michelangelo Antonioni's 1962 film L'Eclisse, which tells the story of a man and a woman who attempt to fall in love in the estranged utopian landscape of the artificial urban space of the Eur, on the outskirts of Rome in the 1960s. We feel that the visual themes and the strong architecural elements used in the film are very present in Mohamedi's wrok, where the human presence is felt like a shadow, a whisper fading into the depths of the blueprint-like drawings.