Through performance, video, painting and textiles, artist Zadie Xa explores the overlapping and conflation of cultures that inform self-identities and notions of self. Her layered textile works are sites for exploring contemporary identity construction and performance through cultural sampling, informed by her experience within the Asian diaspora.

Throughout her practice, Xa uses water and marine ecologies as metaphors for exploring the unknown, whilst also alluding to abstract notions of homeland. Recent solo exhibitions include Child of Magohalmi and the Echoes of Creation, a co-commission with Art Night, London, YARAT Contemporary Art Space, Baku, Tramway, Glasgow (2019) and De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill (2020). She has also staged performances at international galleries and festivals including Art Night London 2019, 58th Venice Biennale, Palais de Tokyo, Hayward Gallery, Serpentine Gallery, Block Universe and the Korean Cultural Centre UK.

Through performance, video, painting and textiles, artist Zadie Xa explores the overlapping and conflation of cultures that inform self-identities and notions of self. Her layered textile works are sites for exploring contemporary identity construction and performance through cultural sampling, informed by her experience within the Asian diaspora.

Throughout her practice, Xa uses water and marine ecologies as metaphors for exploring the unknown, whilst also alluding to abstract notions of homeland. Recent solo exhibitions include Child of Magohalmi and the Echoes of Creation, a co-commission with Art Night, London, YARAT Contemporary Art Space, Baku, Tramway, Glasgow (2019) and De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill (2020). She has also staged performances at international galleries and festivals including Art Night London 2019, 58th Venice Biennale, Palais de Tokyo, Hayward Gallery, Serpentine Gallery, Block Universe and the Korean Cultural Centre UK.

LOVE AND LONELINESS OF A YOUNG MOTHER, 2023

oil on canvas

280 x 200 cm
110 1/4 x 78 3/4 in

Painting on a 1:1 scale, distinctive to the artist’s practice, Helene Appel conjures images that straddle the threshold between realism, sculpture and abstraction. She uses paints and painting techniques that allow her to closely emulate the specificities of each individual subject she paints: the materials she uses, such as oil, watercolour or encaustic, start to resemble the object itself, giving the painted object a physical and three-dimensional presence.

Appel depicts objects from everyday life. In her work we see the inherent aesthetic qualities of trees, seashores, fishing nets, loose folds of fabric; whilst being sure to never avoid the less pleasant details from domestic life, we may also encounter discarded vegetable peelings ready to be thrown onto the compost pile and kitchen sinks full to the brim of murky washing up water and detritus.

Through the process of painting, the artist activates the objects she portrays, empowering them with a sense of autonomy or agency. In this sense, Appel’s paintings can be understood more like portraiture where the objects depicted belong to their own non-anthropocentric world.

Helene Appel (b. 1976, Karlsruhe, Germany) lives and works in Berlin, Germany.

adhesive label on newspaper

Untitled ("a 84"), 2007, turn stubs on vintage magazine page