Fieroza Doorsen | Henna and other ways of mark making

27 January - 5 March 2022

indigo+madder is pleased to present its first solo exhibition by British artist Fieroza Doorsen. Featuring large scale canvases as well as a series of smaller paintings on canvas and paper, the exhibition brings together work spanning almost two decades. Doorsen’s layered paintings feature intuitive gestures, calligraphic marks and biomorphic forms to explore relationships between multi-dimensional processes such as - belonging and exclusion - identity and contradiction - stability and flux - expansion and retreat.

Doorsen is of Indian descent and was born in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa where her parents lived during the apartheid period. She was four when her family emigrated to England, and has lived here ever since. Through her work, she expresses what she describes as an inborn restlessness, fuelled by an investigation of deeply personal moments of connection, belonging, identity formation and reformation. The works showcase a constant tussle between states of energetic chaos and stillness, through experiments with colour, pattern and line. There is an active and ongoing exploration of the space where disparate senses of intimacy, otherness and alienation, all meet to form a new narrative. In various ways, a sense of connection co-existing with alienation, has also become one of the characteristics of the strange, unmapped terrain of virtual spaces, created by our increasingly digital culture. In the spaces Doorsen creates, a re-imagination of both the sense of self and the other takes place. While a certain universality is suggested through mark making, this space remains intimately personal.

Doorsen uses a wide range of materials: charcoal, ink, pastel, oil, acrylic, henna, gouache and collage, in what has been a lifelong commitment to abstraction. At first glance the paintings on paper look precise and structured, but on closer observation reveal the edgy chaos of surfaces, strokes and colours. Thickly applied paint forms the negative space in some works, and pushes against the forms, almost carving them out and playing with the space between enclosure and openness. These almost architectural elements or ‘transition corridors’ open up movement between the various forms. These shapes are also simplified extremely using a controlled palette. In Untitled 3, Henna, made in 2002, Doorsen is interested in the culturally, socially, or linguistically constructed self. She explores her own relationship with henna, a natural dye whose skin staining abilities have been used by women to create body art in many traditions. Rows of ovals made with henna paste, obfuscate the text and playfully enclose the circular illustrations on pages taken from a Turkish book on medicine. The shapes, unburdened with associations and symbolism, play with materials and context to suggest bodily fragility and push boundaries of tradition and gender stereotypes.

Experimenting with scale, Doorsen’s forms and marks become more gestural on larger canvases. By placing shapes together and allowing them to bleed into each other, she is interested in ‘allowing things to happen’ until the forms take on different qualities. In Untitled (vermillion and ochre), completed in 2020, various evocative marks in shades of red, ochre and green draw our eyes, as layers of thick, white paint constrain and tighten the composition. In Untitled (crimson and madder), colours glow, advance or recede, making the surface incredibly varied and full of vitality. Shapes and light are scattered all over the surface and the spectator is invited to choose their own positionality and relationship to the work. At each point, different relations of stability and instability come to the fore, which closely reflects Doorsen’s own painting process – she favours an open-ended exploration, where a composition is sometimes reworked over years. The paintings become energetic, fragmented manifestations of a sense of displacement and a search for equilibrium. An act of perpetual adjustment and balance enacted in various scales, where absolute resolution remains elusive. It is always beyond grasp, and the search continues.

Fieroza Doorsen was born in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa in 1960. She lives and works in London. She received a BA in Fine Art from Ravensbourne College of Art, London and an MA in printmaking from Chelsea School of Art, London.

Selected group exhibitions include Along Those Lines curated by Clare Bradley, House of Barnabas, London, 2020; The seed of its opposite, curated by Jai Llewellyn, Gallery North, Glasgow Kelvin College, 2015; Drawing, Emma Hill Fine Art, Eagle Gallery, London, 2014; COLLAGES by Modern British and Contemporary artists, Wilson Stephens and Jones Fine Art, London, 2014; Emergence, Curated by Erin Lawlor, Katrin Bremermann, Yifat Gat, Hotel de Sauroy, Paris, 2013; ART AT HOME, Curated by Mimmi O'Connell and Filippo Tattoni-Marcozzi, Eaton Square, London, 2011; Poste Concret, Paris CONCRET, Paris, 2011; If it didn’t exist you’d have to invent it: a partial Showroom history, The Showroom, London, 2009; Summertime, curated by Filippo Tattoni-Marcozzi, Warehouse Contemporary Art, Teramo, Abruzzo, Italy, 2008; By Hand: The Outer Limits of Drawing, curated by Paul Hedge, Hales Gallery, London, 2002; Works on Paper, Hamiltons, London, 2001; Privacy, (Documentario 2) curated by Gianni Romano, Spazio Opos, Milan, 1993; Seventeen, British and American Artists, Greenwich Street, New York, 1992; Love at First Sight, curated by Graham Gussin, The Showroom, London, 1992; Five British Artists, curated by Christa Gather, Thomas Backhaus Gallery, Dusseldorf, 1990 amongst several others. Fieroza's work is held in various public and private collections including Cath Kidson, London; the Penguin Collection, London; and the Deedee Rose Collection, Dallas, USA.