Surabhi Saraf: Fold
New media/performance artist and composer Surabhi Saraf presents her mesmerizing video FOLD, which, like all of her work, is rooted in her training in Indian classical music and dance.
FOLD is a wall-sized projection divided into a grid of 96 frames. In the beginning, the moving image in each of the frames is identical: a dark-haired young woman – the artist herself – sits quietly folding laundry. The multiplication of the image echoes the repetition of her movements – fluid, simple, homely – and is a witty reference to the seeming endlessness of domestic chores. Her gentle, meditative and haunting humming is punctuated by the snap of a sheet shaken or the hiss of a crease smoothed.
Stretching a brightly colored shawl across each of the repeating frames, Saraf creates billowing color fields, hypnotically vibrating grids and flickering geometric patterns. But as she’s doubling-over jeans or flapping out her saris and blouses, something goes amiss. It’s subtle at first – you’re not sure if you saw or imagined a stutter. The frames drift out of sync. Then a twitch becomes syncopation and the field dissolves into a shivering and fluttering choreography of pattern.
Historical allusions abound – the video work of Bruce Nauman, the banks of flickering screens of Nam June Paik, or the body-related performances of Janine Antoni and Ana Mendieta. There are echoes of the paintings of Bridget Riley, Ellsworth Kelly, Sol LeWitt and Frank Stella and reminders of Eva Hesse’s repetition of forms. Anyone who has been in India and seen Dhobis flailing their laundry will know that the piece touches on issues of labor. But the work is closest in spirit to the work of Agnes Martin – a profound meditation based on color, light and repetition.
Born in Indore, India in 1983, Surabhi Saraf earned a BFA in painting from MSU Baroda (India) and an MFA in Art and Technology from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her works have been screened and performed in galleries and video art festivals in India, Spain, The Netherlands, South Korea, Israel, Greece, Australia, Italy, Turkey and the U.S. Recent live performances in San Francisco include Oscillations//Live at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (2012), Grains at the Asian Art Museum (2013), and public performances of FOLD {Live} (2011). Saraf recently had her first solo exhibition at Hosfelt Gallery, premiering the first two works in a three-part series inspired by her family’s pharmaceutical factory in India. Saraf is a recipient of the 2015 Eureka Fellowship Award.
