馬琼珠 MA, Ivy
Cultivating an aesthetic characterized by quietness and stillness, Ivy Ma's work becomes, ultimately, a philosophical reflection on nature and history. Her process is both careful and caring, infused with humility and sympathy even as she examines difficult history- the aftermath of the atomic explosion in Hiroshima, the bits of clothing still found in Cambodia's "Killing Fields," the empty barracks of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Looking, collecting, drawing and thinking, Ivy works her way through history to find what we might call "the human thread" running through everything. The objects she collects, the images she selects, and the occasional photographs and videos she produces all strike a similar chord, one that is at once uncanny, disturbing and beautiful. Through her early in sculpture and installation she developed a sensibility towards scale, texture and light that now informs her two dimensional work. Starting in 2010 she began focusing on images- both stills taken from specific films and photographs found in history museums - for an ongoing series of what she calls 'drawing-interventions' where she actively erases and draws into and over the existing image. The images themselves fixate on small details and transient moments: discarded objects, empty spaces, fragments of a landscape and blurred, indistinct patterns which, collectively, form a parallel, purposefully "minor" history- a history of things forgotten which, in truth, inform and direct our lives as much as any grand narrative.
