Making Grass | Body is active

David Krut Projects is pleased to present Making Grass, an exhibition of new drawings and prints, as well as a performance piece, by Tamara Osso. The artist uses interdisciplinary collaborations and acts of collective imagining to explore how dance and drawing can augment each other. The collaboration at the centre of this project, between Osso and the Afro-fusion dance company Moving Into Dance (MID), was organised around the idea of imagining a green space together – a lawn in the city – where the dancers and Osso could playfully explore the range of marks that can be generated when the whole body is activated as a thing that draws.

 The impetus for this collective act of invention came from Osso’s understanding of a lawn as a space of possibility but also one of contradiction and illusion. Lawns require maintenance and resourcing, and a continuous collective will to sustain them. Using the metaphor of making a lawn, and the dance studio as the place to lay the lawn, the project became about consistently nurturing and maintaining ideas around individual identity, open spaces and collective ideology.

 How do we translate – whether into dance or into graphic marks – our understandings of landscape and our ideas around human integration and connection? How is this inflected by working in a city like Johannesburg, where access, safety and greenness are not equally distributed. Making Grass explores whether it is possible to invent a new metaphorical landscape which takes into account community, collective stories, experimentation, conversation, movement and mark-making. Processes of translation and transformation have been integral to producing the works included in this exhibition. First there was a process of researching dance and choreographic modalities through drawing. The ritual of visiting the Moving into Dance studios began with regular observational drawing as a mode for researching dance and movement. Next, choreography and dance were used as means of creating drawings, linking different parts of the body with different kinds of mark-making. The third process of translation occurred when Osso entered the print studio at Eleven Editions and re-interpreted the first order visual translation of dance into a strongly graphic language.

 For Osso the multimodality and the collaborative nature of the processes that have led to this body of work are a microcosmic experiment with the acts of communication and collectivity that we activate in society more broadly. How can we collectively imagine safe spaces, spaces for experimentation and play? And how can drawings become maps of these collective imaginings?

Polycentric Minds | 2022

Charcoal on Fabriano paper.
163cm x 140 cm

Foot Circle | 2023

Charcoal on Fabriano paper.
163cm x 140 cm

Repetition Is Necessary | 2022

Charcoal on Fabriano paper.
120.5 x 131 cm

Grass | 2023

Charcoal on Fabriano paper.
136 x 210 cm

In Alignment | 2023

Charcoal on Hahnemühle paper.
41 x 56 cm

Tent | 2023

Charcoal on Hahnemühle paper.
46 x 33,5 cm

Interruption | 2023

Charcoal on Hahnemühle paper.
57 x 42 cm

Co-ordination | 2023

Watercolour monotype with oil overlay.
44 x 63 cm

Sacred Space | 2023

Watercolour monotype with oil overlay.
44 x 63 cm

Holding Space 1 | 2023

Watercolour monotype with oil overlay.
46 x 40 cm

Holding Space 11 | 2023

Watercolour monotype with oil overlay.
46 x 40 cm

Place/Displace | 2023

Watercolour monotype with oil overlay.
44 x 63 cm

Mandelbrot + Chaos Theory | 2023

Watercolour monotype with oil overlay
60,5 x 81,5 cm

Omnipresent  | 2023

Photograph on 100% Cotton Fine Art Paper.
Edition of 5.
47 x 47 cm

Making Grass  | 2023

Photograph on 100% Cotton Fine Art Paper.
Edition of 3.
54,5 x 82,5 cm

Self-portrait  | 2023

Photograph on 100% Cotton Fine Art Paper.
Edition of 5.
113 x 156,5 cm

Shoo-shoo tsek | 2023

Photograph on 100% Cotton Fine Art Paper.
Edition of 3.
57 x 57 cm

Making Grass  | 2023

Tamara Osso with Siphosethu Mhlongo, Nkosana Fakude, Mzimkhulu Ancestor Ka-Mtimkhulu, Wesley Hlongwane and Lefa Jack
Music by Thabo Letseleha Naha
Price on Request

‘Making Grass’ Documentary

Filmed and edited by Johnathan Pinkhard
Assisted by Wandile Xaba

‘Making Grass’ Documentary

Filmed and edited by Johnathan Pinkhard
Assisted by Wandile Xaba