Ava Grauls
b.1982 South Africa / Belgium
Artist based in London.
I paint maps.
I am fascinated by the reproduction of history and the visual storytelling that emerges through cartography. My work also considers public nostalgia as a fabrication of the past, which we find connected to the myth of nation-building. I primarily explore the discourse of occupation—examining who is permitted to inhabit a space and who is excluded.
My practice is tactile, handmade, and mobile, mirroring the slippery, naive, and conflicting nature of public memory and our deep sense of self rooted in national identity. My work is primarily centered on painting, often exploring different materials and techniques to convey the message within the medium. As a South African, an immigrant, and a woman, I am acutely aware of my own personal identity crisis—being an ex-European raised in Africa—and the legacy of colonisation enforced through the act of mapping.
My work is political, questioning processes of representation and occupation, yet it is not overtly activist. Each series of works looks at different questions of belonging and the structures that position us as 'part of' or 'outside of' systems of belonging. These range across philosophical, psychoanalytical, and historical debates that shape the cultural identity of a people. Ultimately, the deepest sense of self is rooted from the ground up.
The core question my practice grapples with is: how can we sensitively explore the complexity of personal belonging against the specific historical references of a place within a painting?
New work in progress