Asad Raza's Absorption was presented by Kaldor Public Art Projects and Carriageworks.
Absorption brought the ground beneath us into the foreground, drawing our attention to the living and changing nature of soil. The work constituted almost 300 tonnes of organic and inorganic material, including sand, silt, clay, phosphates, lime, spent grain, cuttlebone, legumes, coffee and green waste, combined into a new soil mixture or neosoil.
A group of cultivators enacted this process of mixing, creating a composite material that visitors were free to take for their own uses, allowing Absorption to continue to grow and be nurtured beyond the Clothing Store.
Developed in collaboration with a team of scientists at the University of Sydney Institute of Agriculture, Absorption transformed the Clothing Store into a site for active processes, collaborations and conversations. Within the world created by Absorption, Raza invited artists Daniel Boyd, Chun Yin Rainbow Chan, Megan Alice Clune, Dean Cross, Brian Fuata, Agatha Gothe-Snape, Jana Hawkins-Andersen, Khaled Sabsabi and Ivey Wawn to create interventions in the form of installations, performances and experiments.
Raza drew together the approaches and ontologies of art and science, allowing for absorption to take place across multiple levels of understanding in the creation of this work.
Absorption
3 – 19 May 2019
The Clothing Store, Carriageworks, Sydney
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Daniel Boyd
Chun Yin Rainbow Chan
Megan Alice Clune
Dean Cross
Brian Fuata
Agatha Gothe-Snape
Jana Hawkins-Andersen
Khaled Sabsabi
Ivey Wawn
This resource is designed to help students and educators understand and engage with the themes and concepts of Asad Raza's Absorption. The kit comprises an overview of the project, Asad Raza's practice, conceptual framework, classroom questions and activities, along with a glossary of key terms, and list of references for further reading.
Born in 1974 in Buffalo, USA and of Pakistani background, Raza works with experiences, human and non-human beings, and objects. He conceives of exhibitions as metabolic entities, zones of activity in which he constructs dialogue and scenarios between visitors and participants.
Past works include Untitled (plot for dialogue), for which Raza installed a tennis-like game in a deconsecrated church in Milan. Root sequence. Mother tongue, first shown at the 2017 Whitney Biennial, is a forest of twenty-six living trees with human caretakers in the museum. For home show, which took place at his apartment in New York, Raza asked friends, family and artists to intervene in his own life.
Art Services NSW
Michelle Demers is a scientific advisor and cultivator on 