Untitled (Noura12)
1999 - Present
Description
A bare-shouldered figure is drawn in charcoal and warm sepia against a flat greige ground. The head is turned to the right and tipped down, the face given in near-profile with the nose, lips, and jaw softly modelled. There is no eye in that profile.
Two eye forms appear instead in a dark patch on the side of the skull, set one above the other at temple height where no eye belongs. Each is a dark hollow holding a pale almond shape. They are the only passages in the picture given hard edges and worked detail, and they face the viewer directly while the face turns away.
A continuous gold thread loops many times around the head in wide, wandering coils, and the tangle crowds densest directly over those sockets. One strand escapes to the upper left, ties itself into a small knot in open air, and tapers to nothing. Another falls from the tangle down the throat and sternum, gathers into a loose coil at mid-chest, then unravels into fine strands that run off the bottom edge of the composition.
Both arms are folded tightly across the chest, each hand gripping the opposite shoulder with the fingers visible and pressing into the skin. The body is solid and still. The thread is neither.
The drawing turns the face away and relocates the seeing to the side of the head, so refusal and attention are carried out in the same gesture. The places capable of looking are also the places the thread gathers most heavily over. Signed lower left in two lines, with a fine rule beneath the first name.
Preservation Notes
PROVISIONAL. Assessment made from visual inspection of a digital image only. No physical examination has taken place. Awaiting confirmation from the artist. MATERIAL ASSESSMENT The work reads as charcoal or soft graphite with an applied gold-ochre line, but the reading is not settled. Supporting the organic reading: granular deposit and edge smudging across the shoulders and back, and a gold line that varies in density where it crosses itself. Against it: the ground is an unusually uniform greige with no visible paper tooth, and the tonal transitions are smoother than typical charcoal handling. Both are consistent with a digital work made with charcoal-style brushes. Inspection is inconclusive. Handling implication while undetermined: if the gold element is applied fiber it sits proud of the surface, and the work must not be stacked, pressed, or surface-cleaned. Treat as physical and fragile until confirmed otherwise. QUESTIONS FOR THE ARTIST Physical or digital. If physical, the substrate and the gold medium. If digital, the authoring application and whether a signed print exists. Title, year, and dimensions are all unrecorded. SIGNATURE Signed lower left in two lines of gold cursive with a fine rule beneath the first name. The signature has not been transcribed here. Automated reading of this artist's signature has been unreliable across the archive, returning a different incorrect name on nearly every attempt, and it should be read by a person.
Tags
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