Joana Choumali
“I am not lost, just wandering”
New York, 257 Bowery
Every morning, Choumali wakes at 5am and walks for long stretches of time interacting with the land, the buildings and the forms taking shape around her. This routine, one of introspection, takes place even when Choumali travels to other countries. Her habit is to photograph the landscapes which captivate her every morning. “The ‘Alba’hian’ series is about my experience of walking at daybreak in my city of residence Abidjan and other cities such as Dakar, Senegal, Accra, Ghana but also Essaouira, Morocco and Kyoto, Japan),” says Choumali. “In this selection, I broaden my angle of view, the size of the pieces and the characters become larger, as an evocation of inner growth.”
Untitled (Ça Va Aller), 2019
Combining collage, embroidery, quilting and photomontage, Choumali builds these images, layering ethereal sheer fabrics and golden paint with multiple photographs from her walks—silhouettes of passerbys or quiet empty roads. Her process is slow, as meditative as the walks themselves, and by merging the instant—digital photography—with the time-consuming—embroidery—Choumali explores the relationship between the metaphorical and the physical, evoking moments of revelation, introspection and rediscovery. These contrast the real world and the world of the imagination. The long hours she spends sewing together the different layers and embroidering her motifs and drawings onto the fabrics have become moments of meditation; another ritual by which she is able to observe herself changing through this process, to examine her emotions and reactions and reshape them in a different, clearer way. “I explore my personal landscape facing new horizons,” she explains. “The notion of wandering to know oneself better and to finally meet oneself in the tranquility of the new day.”
