The Ruarts Foundation presents Anna Birch’s solo exhibition ‘White as Soot’. The title of the exhibition is an oxymoron of absolute opposites, with an idiom taken from folklore: ‘How are things? — White as soot’. The phrase implies difficulty, but in this project it serves as a metaphor for duality. Anna Birch’s exhibition is an exploration in which personal stories are intertwined with the history of the country. Running throughout is the theme of myth formed by the state, and the choice of the individual.
The artist uses stock images and resorts to working with artificial intelligence and photo collage, thereby deliberately distancing herself from an authorial stance. These spaces have no specific geography, yet they are instinctively recognisable and comprehensible. Innumerable personal destinies are concealed behind each window of a high-rise building. From the outside all the windows seem identical, but inside we find unique stories. This is a reflection on our roles in different perspectives: inside the system, and separately from it. Within the system a person risks becoming faceless, although there is an alternative path, much like the essence of a flower that retains its unique nature.
The ‘White as Soot’ exhibition applies to the place where we live, both physically and spiritually – our country, home or city, which are, in a way, our garden. In the compositions the perspective lines of façades merge smoothly with the edges of the tiles. The architecture of the interior space is intertwined with the external, checkered framework. A third layer, resembling a curtain, is formed by the drifting stems of porcelain flowers. This strange interaction of a ‘living’ element with rigid oppressive structures evokes the feeling of an illusion, where the laws of reality appear suspended. “The themes of fragility and contradiction are important to me; I often work with porcelain, a material in which dualism initially remains hidden. It is everlasting, until you break it,” says the artist.
Among the works on display, only two lack integral floral elements or buildings, and this is no coincidence; they symbolise an entrance and exit. The ‘Summer’ and ‘Winter’ panels embody the semiotics of water and pathways. Depicting a river flowing towards the horizon, they represent the very path that is both alluring and elusive. “For me nature is a point of meditation and tranquillity, like the point of purification, the point of silence, the point of the beginning and end. The exhibition is intended to be cyclical, but these landscapes give the spectator a sense of fluid freedom in determining their own path,” explains Anna Birch.