Lina Iris Viktor: Mythic Time / Tens of Thousands of Rememberings
10th July 2024 – 19th January 2025
Sir John Soane’s Museum
13 Lincoln’s Inn Fields
London
WC2A 3BP
Sir John Soane’s Museum will present an exhibition by Liberian-British artist, Lina Iris Viktor, titled Mythic Time / Tens of Thousands of Rememberings. Viktor’s work unearths connections across time and cultures, from ancient Egypt to medieval illumination and indigenous Australian art. In bringing together these connections, Viktor mirrors Soane’s own eclectic approach to collecting objects from varied cultures and time periods. Viktor’s sculptural works, made especially for this exhibition, will be interspersed throughout the Museum, introducing new presences and memories into Soane’s former home.
Spanning sculpture, painting, photography and gilding, Viktor’s practice explores the complexities of time, memory and historic traditions. Both her sculptural works and paintings employ ancient, elemental materials, from bronze and ceramic to wood and silk, drawing on their primal, timeless qualities, as well as their formal characteristics.
The exhibition unites three large works from Viktor’s Constellations series, including one made especially for the exhibition. Never shown together before, they create a powerful, meditative space which evokes the night sky. The artist describes them as intricate, golden labyrinths through which the eye can travel. In this, they are a contemporary counterpoint to the labyrinthine spaces of Sir John Soane’s Museum and his characteristic use of golden light.
Viktor has created a number of works for the crypt. These engage with Soane’s symbolic use of darkness in this space as a meditation on mortality, and the artist’s own exploration of blackness as the primary material from which all things emerge, the materia prima. Her totemic sculpture Nbiru sits between two casts of the Medici Venus from Soane’s collection. Here, Viktor’s abstract, glittering figure contrasts sharply with traditional representations of the female form. Two golden Ritual Stools flank a statue of Britannia in a grouping which speaks of the ways in which objects embody power.
Elsewhere, Viktor’s relief works evoke the arches found throughout the Museum, inviting viewers into otherworldly landscapes. Richly ornamented works on paper incorporate gilded objects from cowrie shells to crosses and African combs. These form part of Viktor’s universal symbolic language, capable of communicating across time and cultures.
The fusion of motifs, materials and fragments of time across Viktor’s work and the Soane collection imbues the Museum with new layers of memory, immersing audiences in a Mythic Time of Viktor’s own creation.
An exhibition publication will be available from October 2024, published by Sir John Soane’s Museum, and will include contributions by Ekow Eshun, Ben Okri and exhibition curator Louise Stewart.
Mythic Time / Tens of Thousands of Rememberings follows Lina Iris Viktor’s debut solo show at Pilar Corrias, London, which opened on 5 June.
Lina Iris Viktor: Mythic Time / Tens of Thousands of Rememberings opens on the 10th of July 2024 until the 19th of January 2025 at Sir John Soane’s Museum
©2024 Lina Iris Viktor, Sir John Soane’s Museum
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