In the absence of colour
An artist creates works that allow for a transcendental experience in the spaces in between.
By Anna Seaman
If ever an artist embodied their practice, it is Patricia Millns. An institution in the UAE’s vibrant art scene, Millns is dedicated to minimalism. Her wardrobe is consistently monochrome (she only wears black), her house is all white (with one black chair), her diet is strictly vegan, and she is meticulous about frugality. This is not through a desire to join a contemporary trend or to be purposefully cool; this is the way she has always chosen to live and, now in her 70s, these choices are intensifying.
“My art is my life,” she says. “If I didn’t dress like this or live like this, I wouldn’t create the art that I do. I have always been minimalist but as I have developed my practice and got older, a lot of what I may have thought was important doesn’t matter anymore.
“I can’t believe the amount of stuff that is considered needed for life these days. To me, it is all noise. I grew up in post-war England in the 1950s. We kept the wrappers of sweets and treasured them. My mother would give us her empty perfume bottles and the boxes they came in. I can’t imagine children even noticing these things nowadays. It makes me sad that the preciousness of everyday objects is overlooked.”
Opening image: SILENT CONVERSATIONS (2022) Handstitched coffee filters, site specific, approximately 30 x 30 x 30 cm. Portrait of Patricia Millns courtesy of Bougessa.
Millns has dedicated her life’s work to elevating society’s quotidian items into artforms. Through delicate and labour-intensive processes, Millns uses a needle and thread to tie hundreds of coffee filters together to form large, round, collar-like objects that resemble Elizabethan-era ruffs. In other works, she hand-cuts unused tea bags, empties out the powder (saving it, of course), and uses the fragile paper in circular arrangements that are striking and surprising in their beauty. Almost always, paper is her medium of choice and her works are made in units or series. She never produces only one object. “I’ve always done multiples because it is the spaces in between the objects that allow the viewer to participate,” she explains.
Indeed, space between is the name of Millns’ solo exhibition at Maraya Art Centre this autumn. It is her first solo exhibition since 2012 and is comprised of works made in the past two years. The exhibition will unfold over two halves with the gallery space divided into a black half and a white half and the artworks displayed in corresponding pairs on both sides. The atmosphere will be intentionally calming and silent, with a path set out for the viewer allowing for an experience that the artist describes as transcendental.
“I want to create something that is calm and spiritual so that the viewer can enter into those clean, simple spaces between the objects and go beyond their personal worries and transcend themselves, just for a short space of time. If you allow yourself those spaces of time in a gentle way, you will see the objects in a different way.”
Top: INTERVALS (2022), hand-stitched coffee filters. Above: SPACE BETWEEN (2022), Japanese teabags, light installation, site specific.
This reveals another part of Millns’ practice, a deep and sincere expression of spirituality as she sees it. Having lived in the region for 40 years, Millns says that spirituality seeped into her soul. Her work is not considered to have a religious expression, but without doubt there is a consideration of and respect for higher powers. The Japanese principle of Ma, which relates to a pause in time, an interval or emptiness in space, is fundamental to her practice. “The space becomes more important than the actual object and then everything else—like adornment, decoration or colour—becomes superfluous. This is why I choose to use paper because it is simple, and simplicity should be cherished,” she says.
Her constant use of circles also underlines this philosophy. “Circles are the simplest shapes and they are pure. My intention to is to create a spiritual space to make the viewer stop for a second and experience. Whatever that experience is, is open. They don’t have to experience the art, rather the art is something that can open up an experience.”
Dr. Nina Heydemann, curator of this exhibition and the director of Maraya, has worked alongside Millns to bring the experiential elements of this show to life. There will be a large spiral, a sculptural piece, in the centre of the two galleries that viewers can enter, and a lot of emphasis on the use of dark and light.
“It will be an immersive experience,” Heydemann says. “In our times, museums and galleries have become places where people come to focus, a sort of sanctuary, a place where people can enter for calm and peace and come back to themselves. In Patricia’s show in particular, we are enabling this process.”
Heydemann, who is a personal friend of the artist and who has worked with her in different capacities over the years, is thrilled at the opportunity to bring Millns’ work back into the spotlight. “Her solo exhibitions are scarce. This will be a chance to introduce many people to her work, and for others to show a slice through her entire oeuvre. I might say this show is long overdue, but instead, I will simply say, it is time.”
space between, Works by Patricia Millns at Maraya Art Centre, Sharjah, October 10 to February 12.
Photographs courtesy Maraya art centre
