Lygia Clark and Sonia Boyce, two artists separated by decades and continents, but brought together at the Whitechapel Gallery to explore their aesthetic connections and similarities. Does it work? Are they linked in some deep, profound, interesting way? No.
Clark was a Brazilian modernist, who over the course of her career moved away from 2D geometric abstraction towards artworks you could touch and interact with, artworks that could shape your emotions.
There are some beautiful examples of her clever abstract paintings and drawings here; a clash of white and green triangles, a piercing composition of sharp red and black spikes. But her ‘bichos’ are the real draw, neat little metal structures you can fold and reshape, allowing you to become an integral part of the art-making process.
Later, Clark would get into psychology, creating artworks that had therapeutic uses; bags of ping pong balls that act as sensory toys, multiple jumpsuits sewn together forcing six people to function as one body. It might work as therapy, but it’s not great art.
Then there’s a not-quite-successful attempt to show how Clark’s participatory artworks relate to English artist Sonia Boyce, who has also co-curated this show and whose work takes over the upstairs galleries.
A 2006 video piece comes first, showing a white man and a Black woman having their hair braided together. It’s an incisive, tense metaphor for the awkward relation of the show’s title, people forced to find a way to share uncomfortable space. It’s great.
The other work here is a multi-screen video of a 2017 performance at the ICA, with people in silver leotards folding fabric and headbutting wind chimes. The walls are covered in bespoke wallpaper, but the rest is just documentation of the work when it originally happened. Regardless of whether or not the performance is good, these videos lack the power and vitality of watching it happen in real time. You’ve got to ask yourself if a video of an old performance is a good use of two massive gallery spaces.
The two halves of this show don’t relate well to each other, and aren’t properly explored or contextualised. It’s not that the art here is bad, necessarily. It’s just that it’s a bit of an awkward relation.
