From the Series
“I’d never heard of the Los Angeles artist Liza Lou before seeing her work on an idle afternoon in London. Ever since visiting the White Cube Gallery in 2006, when the MacArthur Foundation Fellow was showing her large-scale sculptural installation Security Fence (2005), Lou is the first person that comes to mind whenever this pesky craft vs art/design/the world debate gets removed from the dusty trophy cabinet for a polish. Here’s why.
“Security Fence is the outcome of a collaboration between Lou and a team of 20 beadworkers resident in and around Durban. Yep, Durban, that sweaty coastal city famous for exporting rather than importing talent. In an interview with Tim Marlow, a writer, broadcaster and director of exhibitions at White Cube, Lou said of her work, largely made in Durban: ‘I was initially responding to the images of torture and abuse happening in places like Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay. But as an American living and working in South Africa with all of the associations of danger, race issues and post-apartheid, and the incredible amount of barbed wire that’s everywhere, I felt like I was working on a project in exactly the right place and time. All of this was further emphasised by the fact that I made this work with 20 Zulu women, all of whom knew very well the darker meaning of barbed wire fences.’
“Lou quotes one of her collaborators, Buhle, as saying, ‘We are covering it with love’.”
“I’d never heard of the Los Angeles artist Liza Lou before seeing her work on an idle afternoon in London. Ever since visiting the White Cube Gallery in 2006, when the MacArthur Foundation Fellow was showing her large-scale sculptural installation Security Fence (2005), Lou is the first person that comes to mind whenever this pesky craft vs art/design/the world debate gets removed from the dusty trophy cabinet for a polish. Here’s why.
“Security Fence is the outcome of a collaboration between Lou and a team of 20 beadworkers resident in and around Durban. Yep, Durban, that sweaty coastal city famous for exporting rather than importing talent. In an interview with Tim Marlow, a writer, broadcaster and director of exhibitions at White Cube, Lou said of her work, largely made in Durban: ‘I was initially responding to the images of torture and abuse happening in places like Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay. But as an American living and working in South Africa with all of the associations of danger, race issues and post-apartheid, and the incredible amount of barbed wire that’s everywhere, I felt like I was working on a project in exactly the right place and time. All of this was further emphasised by the fact that I made this work with 20 Zulu women, all of whom knew very well the darker meaning of barbed wire fences.’
“Lou quotes one of her collaborators, Buhle, as saying, ‘We are covering it with love’.”
