Galactic Jam

Galactic Jam continues the work Nadia Kaabi-Linke began in 2018 with A Negative With Black Hair on White Ground. The two works share the same source, method, and question, and together present a single idea in two stages. Both start with monotypes produced using hair, because hair is the most intimate trace a body leaves behind, and it contains time, age, desire, and beauty, along with all the meanings associated with women; after printing, however, it loses that narrative and becomes simply lines.
In both works, the prints build up gradually, then are altered by hand using brushes as fine as 0001. The process is similar to that of a miniaturist: slow, precise, and almost obsessive. It is a dedication of the hand. The conflict between these two aspects motivates both works. On one side lie wild, organic lines that cannot be controlled; on the other, a discipline of near-total control. Neither side prevails, and this tension constitutes the work.
The painting titled A Negative With Black Hair on White Ground contains this tension within the square, for the hair is rendered neutral and free from any narrative. In this way, the format adopts the dimensions of Malevich’s square, the painting which rejected representation.
Galactic Jam takes this approach even further. Instead of using the square format, it adopts a larger one and leaves the square behind. In this broader space, the hair spreads into constellations that recall neural networks, cartographies, and entanglements. What is microscopic becomes cosmic. As above, so below: a greater order is contained within the smallest trace. This has long been the aim of the miniature and the illustrated astronomical manuscript, a person working at the scale of a grain describing the heavens.
In certain places it remains open and breathable; in others, it becomes a dark, dense substance. The piece alternates between lightness and intensity, between violence and harmony. It doesn’t show anything; instead, it comes to light through perception in those who take the time to look.
On its own, Galactic Jam has no point of reference; when placed next to the earlier work, the reference reappears not as a quotation but as a relationship. Instead of using geometric shapes, black and white—the two extremes of Suprematism—are recreated from hair and the body. Malevich produced the black square first and then the white. Kaabi-Linke follows the same sequence: the black comes first, and the white comes after.
To the artist, the two pieces are like brothers and sisters: they are made of the same material, executed by the same hand, and with the same patience, beginning under restraint and then being allowed to free themselves. For this reason, they complement one another and are intended to be viewed together.