An ambitious watercolor project connects the museum collection to moments of beauty in overlooked places, starting with the ground beneath our feet.
Al-An deSouza’s Table Settings invites viewers into a world of textures and details inspired by the permanent galleries of the Asian Art Museum and informed by the artist’s practice of photographing the streets while walking, attending closely to their “cracks and stains, signage and markings, bumps and dips, and potential slips and trips.” The work was created over months at a living room table; each session began with a pot of tea, remnants of which formed the ground of that day’s painting.
Layering elements that are rarefied and humble, intentional and unplanned, Table Settings offers a meditation on where we find value and beauty, both in the galleries and beyond. deSouza describes taking inspiration from a uniquely attuned movement through their surroundings: “looking down, watching your step, accepting one’s connection to the baseness of matter.”
“I decided on watercolor for its association with the amateur ‘Sunday’ painter, with the feminine, for its low carbon footprint, and especially in how it is a technique of more or less controlled staining,” relates deSouza. “It seems devalued for all these reasons, and it is this devaluing which attracts me in relation to what is socially valued, and what is seen as a stain on the social body and a stain on ‘pure’ culture.”
Al-An deSouza (American, b. 1958) works across disciplines including photography, text, performance, and pedagogy. Their artworks have been shown extensively in the US and internationally. Their 2018 book How Art Can Be Thought makes a case for art as a vital university-level research discipline; their most recent book, Ark of Martyrs, is a polyphonic “replacement” of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. deSouza’s writings have appeared in publications including Third Text, London, The Brooklyn Rail, and Art Journal, NY. Their artworks have been shown at venues worldwide including the Phillips Collection, the Krannert Art Museum, the Johnson Museum, the Pompidou Centre, the Gwangju Biennale, and the Guangzhou Triennale.
