Tau Lewis

Opium

€10,000

Edition of 2025.4 (H) × 30.5 (W) × 30.5 (D) cm

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Healing via making, Tau Lewis stitches together memory, history and the Black imaginary.

The Church of Mantic Plants is a series of 20 unique sculptures stitched by hand in Lewis’ Brooklyn studio. Every work has been named individually, in this case — Opium.

The works are launching alongside a print edition by Ludovic Nkoth as part of Inner Visions, a series curated by Larry Ossei-Mensah.

Medium

In keeping with the generative, radical upcycling seen throughout the artist’s practice, each sculpture is made from an assemblage of textiles including cows leather, pig suede, sheep suede and shearling, stuffed with polyester fibre fill and detailed with white river rocks, acrylic paint and blackened steel.

Certificate of Authenticity

Arrives with a certificate of authenticity.

Finishing

Arrives accompanied by a leather-bound monograph containing drawings of all 20 works alongside a collection of short poems and writings by the artist.

Release date

August 25, 2020

Payment

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Behind the scenes

Tau Lewis1 collaborationLewis’ work is abundantly detailed - tactile, transformative and terrestrial. She works predominantly with fabric and leather to create “soft portraits” using a broad range of techniques from sewing to carving. The labour-intensive processes act as a symbolic mode of healing. Materials like shells, hair, rock and plaster are recycled into fantastical figures and shrines, while objects foraged from numerous cities are constructed into what the artist calls “portraits of the landscape.” Exploring the erasure of Blackness in both art history and Canadian culture, Lewis illuminates the geographical and social histories that each found object has witnessed. Her work sits within a lineage of Black cultural production including mixed-media artists like Lonnie Holley and Betye Saar, where the recycling of found materials is made generative and radical.

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