This piece emerged from recent meditations on decolonisation and my deeply personal journey of reconnecting with ‘Brazilianity’. The process unfolded as I painted - a ritual of return, intertwining memory, heritage, and the complex layers of identity. In confronting the fluid, evolving nature of the land, its history, and its people, the work explores the tension between external forces that seek to structure and define, and the organic, untamed narratives that lie beneath the surface. The forms in the work are tortuous and bizarrely geometric, pushing outwards as they move into a space of reclamation, the expression of culture and, by extension, the changes in the physical realms. I am between the organic and the impulsive and the comfort of the perspective and geometry and they inevitably create a friction, pushing lines out and in, sometimes disappearing under multiple layers of paint. In this process, I wonder about collective identities and their relationship with the land… the latter refusing to be a static entity, but a living, breathing force in the back of my mind that resists being contained - and I feel that I either chose to surrender to its fluidity or risk getting lost in the frivolous noise out there. As I paint to connect with the land, in a ritual of remembrance, a deeply personal act of cultural excavation emerges, and the painting opens at the studio the opportunity for yet another reimagination of my place in all of this. .
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Original, one-of-a-kind abstract painting by Cristine Balarine
- Size: 150x100cm
- Medium: Acrylics and pastels on raw cotton canvas
- Ready to hang: no, ships rolled and needs to be restretched by your local framer*
- Signature: front and verso, also signed certificate
- Year: 2024
- Finish: silky varnish with UV protection
- Shipping: Free shipping worldwide insured and professionally packed rolled in a tube
- Delivery time: min 10 working days (depending on size, customs formalities etc.)
* Shipping extra large formats rolled is safer and more environmentally friendly than shipping ready-to-hang works. The canvas can be easily re-stretched by a framer at your location, which in most cases is even much cheaper than the increased transport costs for a ready-to-hang painting. If you'd like a comparison quote for shipping ready-to-hang please contact me.
- Free returns within 10 days of receipt of the artwork, see T&C for further information.