Anj Smith: making sense of desire and anxiety through a painter’s forensic language

British artist Anj Smith unveils her latest body of work in the exhibition ‘If Not, Winter’ at Hauser & Wirth’s Zurich gallery. The process has not been easy; most of her recent paintings were created while recovering from a period of chronic anxiety. 

Talking of the persistent taboo around mental health in society, Smith says, ‘I’m not remotely embarrassed about talking about mental health, or recognising that this experience fed into the work to some degree. If acknowledging what happened to me normalises this common horror and reduces any residual taboo, then I’m glad.’

In her paintings, Smith navigates her personal experience of anxiety, using earthy tones of oil paint on linen. Phantasmagorical figures with their backs turned to the viewer meet landscapes littered with symbolic objects. There’s a sense of fragility, but also freedom. Their incomplete narratives are dreamlike, sensual and distant—an atmosphere that has become Smith’s trademark. 

‘And the fact that her muses were women was also deliberately misrepresented by male historians to fit a heteronormative agenda,’ she adds. ‘For me, her work became a springboard from which to think about the manipulated asymmetry of the cannon.’

This might be Smith’s most personal show yet, but her paintings aren’t only autobiographical: ‘Among other things, the micro personal experience of anxiety opens out to address a macro sense of communal unease.’

INFORMATION
‘If Not, Winter’ is on view until 19 May. For more information, visit the Hauser & Wirth website

ADDRESS

Hauser & Wirth
Limmatstrasse 270
Zurich 8005

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