As part of the 4th Tel Aviv Illustration Week, and in collaboration with ‘Portfolio’ Magazine, Almacén is hosting a unique project. The project will combine illustration with poetry while forming a visual-linguistic mélange of languages, cultures, and histories; a new patois.

 

Acclaimed French illustrator Sheina Szlamka is participating in a two-week residency at the art space. During her stay, she will use the gallery as her studio, creating six round large-scale drawings, combining ink, gold leaves and acrylic. Each of these will be based on a different poem. The selected written works, curated by journalist Noga Tarnopolsky, span worlds and senses represented by poets whose personal cultures and identities propelled their art which constantly

challenge us.

 

The project is inspired by the life and work of poet and painter Derek Walcott, who passed away earlier this year. Born and raised in Castries, Saint Lucia, in the West Indies, to a family of English, Dutch and African descent, Walcott’s persona shares various cultural and religious identities. In his poetry, he reflected the complex colonial history of his home island and the post-colonialist context of the Caribbean at large.

The project is fueled by this Walcottian being of 'multiplicity within one'. This fullness of humanity and talents relates to quandaries that are fundamental to our age, in which identities are split at their root, their treetops expanding into canopies lacking any boundaries.

 

Thus, the exhibition is not only introducing two very different artistic modes – poetry and illustration but also various languages, cultures, religions and histories, all intersected into Szlamka’s characteristic visual language.

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Photography by Laura Lachman