Each work is numbered, suggesting an infinite continuum and relentlessness in her experimentation with light. She leaps from steel nodules inspired by Istanbul’s rooftops, to totems made of vehicle reflectors first set upon during a residency in Bangkok, to chevron watercolours that evoke the work of painter Tess Jaray, an early mentor.īegum’s clarity of focus transcends the abundance of colour, materials and forms. Curated by Cliff Lauson, the new director of exhibitions at Somerset House, the show emphasises that, in her exploration of light, Begum can be fickle with her mediums. The show has travelled from Warwick’s recently refurbished Mead Gallery, and will continue on to The Box in Plymouth. Rana Begum with No.1149 Folded Grid (2022), spray paint on Jesmonite. ‘The house is listed and you can’t touch the walls.’ Instead, Begum’s work spreads into the stairwell and onto the balcony. ‘This connection with Soane and the way he plays with light, and brings it into the space, was really exciting,’ Begum enthuses, with the caveat that there were challenges. The manor house was designed by John Soane, a man who considered light his building material. Suspended underneath an original 19th-century circular skylight, the cluster of metal scrunches ushers shards of light onto the glossy floor of the gallery. A similar sculpture is installed at west London’s Pitzhanger Manor & Gallery as part of Begum’s touring exhibition, ‘Dappled Light’. Exposed to the elements, the layers of lattice absorb and deflect light colours intensify and shadows pattern the ground beneath it, evoking light streaming through a jali. The chameleonic sculpture, like the best of Begum’s work, shifts with its environment and its viewer’s position. A light breeze and the work softly swayed. ‘The piece is like a conversation between Roksanda, Stina and me.’ Underneath Begum’s cumulus puff of pigment – deceptively spongey although formed from metal mesh – dancers moved through the air, as dashes of pigment flew with them. Ilinčić dressed the dancers in close-fitting costumes, characteristically bold in their palette.
The work was launched with a performance by the English National Ballet, choreographed by Stina Quagebeur. No.1104 Catching Colour, a floating plume of sherbety colour, stretches out in the centre of City Island’s Botanic Square, encircled by high-rise flats. And movement around, through, out of and into space brought the pair together again this year for a public commission for The Line, a sculpture trail in east London. While Ilinčić was privy to the concrete socialist landscape of her hometown of Belgrade, Serbia, Begum admired the impressive Indo-Islamic buildings during her childhood in Sylhet, Bangladesh. You could see this wonderful aura of pinkness floating around it.’Įmbedded within both practices is the experience and appreciation of architectural principles. ‘Very cheekily, I used one of her Folded Grid series as inspiration for my pre-fall 2019 collection. It’s been a long-standing admiration, ‘even before our collaboration’, says Ilinčić. Begum, an artist fascinated with interplays between light, colour and space, seemingly met her creative kith and kin in Ilinčić, a designer revered for her colour-block, ballooning sculptural pieces. Carving up the lofty inner sanctum, the luminescent nets shot across three storeys of columns and landed on the marble floor to form a prismatic set for Roksanda’s A/W 2022 collection. Rana Begum and fashion designer Roksanda Ilinčić’s first collaboration consisted of a web of coloured fishing nets spun across the Giles Gilbert Scott-designed Durbar Court, the stodgy heart of the UK government’s Foreign Office.
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