RAINRAIN is delighted to present the two-person show, “Frosted”, featuring new sculptural objects and installations by Nazli Efe and Kiani Kodama, running from April 18 to May 25, 2024. With distinctive ways of contextualizing amorphous presences, the two artists explore the adaptability of materials to craft new stories out of the quotidian objects and elements. Each work is anchored in the memories or experience of the respective artist, some of which are deeply personal; however, they are interactive and fluid, showing cultural narratives and profound personal connections that transcend the utilitarian origins of their prototypal products, such as massage tools, cabinet, rice, among others. Through the change of formal condition and display context, everyday objects are viewed through a lens of nuanced transformation, as if seen through “frosted” glass or experienced through a layer of frosting. Similarly, these works encourage and embrace the metamorphosis of context, structure, and function, allowing the materiality to be evocative in its own right.
Materials are vessels, giving form to the intangible, irretrievable and the invisible, while amassing a spatial volume that evokes a sense of agnostic wondering. Objects that are once used or possessed are ripe for revisiting. Kiani Kodama arranges practical instruments, such as massage tools and kenzan—a placement holder and decoration in Japanese ikebana ceremony, into almost ritualized placements, stripping bare their original cultural and operative backgrounds.This is evident in wand: 3 and bird: 3, where wooden massage tools are recast in porcelain and glass, then arranged into abstract forms that seem barely recognizable as their functional selves. Instead, their shapes remind one of floral forms and birds, reflecting the artist's affection for nature. The objects engage in a dialogue, harnessing a sense of rootedness that feels so familiar yet so unattainable. In rice piece 12: mountain, Kodama adheres jasmine, black, and wild rice onto a wooden panel, orchestrating a complex of organic, swirling movements resembling the bodily twists and turns in Japanese communal dance during obon festival. Her own physical manipulation of the rice, combined with the uneven granules of rice, and the pictorial visualization of a dance honoring ancestral spirits, speaks about the interchangeable loss and gain of individual and collective identities.
Nazli Efe takes a constructive and story-telling approach to engage with objects. In her work In Search Of Lost Time In My Grandmother’s Mouth, salt - the ingredient often used in pickling and preserving food - is here applied as the molds carved with the shapes of objects that were once used by the artist’s grandmother. The negative form of objects, or more precisely, their absence, is what renders them eternal as the formless memories that live on. In Half Sugar Cubes, Efe vacuum-seals the sugar cubes and binds them in a glass cabinet, hence twinning the seemingly contradictory intentions of concealing and displaying. She contemplates the relationship between possession and preservation, between protection and isolation. Taking a slightly different approach in Standing Tall Is Heavy, Efe playfully juxtaposes contrasting traits of certain materials. The heaviness of the brass weights clashes with their gleaming, exquisite appearance; the fine threads look precarious yet resilient and adaptable with the movements of the hung weights. Through this work and its title, the artist presents story pieces of female bodies and the journey females have undertaken to fight for their rights.
Both artists’ works are grounded in objects or materials. Yet, their individual approaches and viewpoints present us with parallel universes, enriching our interactions with the objective world. Perhaps, the personal objects and materials once functioned as the Lacanian mirror during one’s childhood, allowing them to distinguish their unique self from their formative environment and thereby acquire the subjectivity needed to navigate the world. However, when revisited in adulthood, time has rendered them frosted. They serve as both protective barriers and attenuating agents, perpetually estranging yet connecting materials from the personal to the historical. The transformation and repurposing of objects propose, in a way, a question that often escapes our consciousness: When fixed references are absent, do presences also wane? Or, do they instead thrive on an intensified awareness that the bygone becomes totally subjected to individual reckoning?
-- Jiajing Sun
About the Artist
Nazli Efe (b.1989) is a Turkish and Cypriot artist with a background in architecture. She is an interdisciplinary artist making installations, sculptures, and performances that focus on the memory and the unconscious mind. Nazli discusses the dialogue between immateriality and materiality, permanence, and ephemerality from a mystical aspect.In her current body of work, Nazli deals with the idea of preserving her recollections by utilizing culinary techniques. She uses vacuum-sealed bags, beeswax, and salt to preserve her memories. Nazli’s installations include material experimentation. She transforms materials in an alchemical way similar to the process of reshaping the past in our minds. Memory follows form and form follows memory. Nazli studied Architecture at Bahcesehir University, Istanbul, and Virginia Tech University in Washington DC. After working in creative industries for 5 years, she completed her MFA at Pratt Institute in 2022 with high honors. Nazli has exhibited at the Sotheby's Institute of Art, Long Island City Artists, and Garment District Alliance and had online shows at the New Art Dealers Alliance, Field Projects. She has received the Stutzman Family Foundation Sculpture Award, Special Recognition, and Pratt Outstanding Merit Award. Her works have been featured in Hyperallergic and Whitehot Magazine of Contemporary Art. She attended the Pratt Forward Residency Program in 2024. Nazli is a Member Artist at the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts Studio Program in New York.
Kiani Kodama (b.1996) was born in Seattle, Washington. She currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. She received her BFA from The Cooper Union School of Art in 2020 and studied at Kyoto Seika University in 2018. Kodama is currently a member of Trestle Art Space in Brooklyn, NY. In 2023, she received the Liu Shiming Foundation Art Grant (New York, NY), was Curator-in-Residence at Underland Gallery (Brooklyn, NY), and held residence at the LA Warman Writer’s Residency (Brooklyn, NY). She has exhibited at the Susquehanna Art Museum (Harrisburg, PA; 2024), NARS Foundation (Brooklyn, NY; 2023), Vox Populi Gallery (Philadelphia, PA; 2023), among others. Recent curatorial projects include Mouthing a Star Shaped Grave at Underland Gallery (Brooklyn, NY; 2023), Deliverance at Trestle Art Space (Brooklyn, NY; 2023) and Brooklyn Voices at Brooklyn Children’s Museum (Brooklyn, NY; 2022). Alongside her studio practice, Kodama is an organizer and advisor of exhibitions and public programming throughout New York. She has collaborated with organizations such as The Children's Museum of Manhattan, Brooklyn Children's Museum, Brooklyn Public Library, The Center for Brooklyn History, Brooklyn Chinese American Association, NYC Department of Education, The Lenape Center, and more.
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