June 1 - October 31, 2020
GALLERY WENDI NORRIS ONLINE
Gallery Wendi Norris presents Say My Name, a solo exhibition of new collage works by Ambreen Butt. Say My Name is Butt’s first exhibition with Gallery Wendi Norris and her first in San Francisco.
Created as a means to explore the relationship between power and vulnerability and to pay homage to innocent lives lost, each of the twelve pieces in Say My Name incorporates the name and age of a single Afghan or Pakistani child killed in U.S. drone strikes. Butt commences by staining the paper in tea. She then separately and repeatedly writes or prints out the child’s name, shreds it into pieces, and arranges and glues the shredded fragments to her tea-stained paper in dense, swirling patterns. This process, undertaken with repetitive and transformational urgency, reconsiders the ripping, tearing action of a drone strike in order to elevate the names of its victims into shapes of exquisite grace and enduring strength.
Ambreen Butt. Khalid (12), 2020, text, 24 karat gold, watercolor with white gouache, and laser engraving on tea-stained paper, 30 x 20 inches (76.2 x 50.8 cm)
Ambreen Butt, Namaloom (Unknown #3), 2020, text on tea-stained paper, 30 x 20 inches (76.2 x 50.8 cm)
Ambreen Butt, Mashooq Jan (15), 2020, text and 24 karat gold on tea-stained paper, 30 x 20 inches (76.2 x 50.8 cm)
Ambreen Butt, Sultanat Khan (16), 2020, text and pen on tea-stained paper, 30 x 20 inches (76.2 x 50.8 cm)
“The reason that I choose to pick the name and the age is because name is our first identity as human beings. When you’re born, you’re given the name and that’s our first identity. So in a way, I am giving this identity back to the people who have been part of that collateral damage and who no longer exist.”
Ambreen Butt, Saifullah (9), 2020, text on tea-stained paper, 30 x 20 inches (76.2 x 50.8 cm)
Ambreen Butt, Razi Mohammad (16), 2020, text and watercolor with white gouache on tea-stained paper, 30 x 20 inches (76.2 x 50.8 cm)
Ambreen Butt, Namaloom (Unknown #4), 2020, text and 24 karat gold on tea-stained paper, 30 x 20 inches (76.2 x 50.8 cm)
Ambreen Butt, Noor Mohammad (15), 2020, text on tea-stained paper, 30 x 20 inches (76.2 x 50.8 cm)
“This piece is called ‘Wife and Son of Badr Mansoor’. There are actually three people involved. We know that the wife and the son — whose name we don’t know — they were the victims, but the person who is left behind, who is living, is also the victim. ”
Ambreen Butt, Wife and Son of Badr Mansoor, 2020, printed text on tea-stained paper, 55 x 30 inches each panel (139.7 x 76.2 cm); 55 x 90 inches total (139.7 x 228.6 cm)
Ambreen Butt, Nawab (17), 2020, text and 24 karat gold on tea-stained paper, 30 x 20 inches (76.2 x 50.8 cm)
Ambreen Butt, Mohammad Yaas Khan (16), 2020, text, watercolor with white gouache, and pen on tea-stained paper, 30 x 20 inches (76.2 x 50.8 cm)
Ambreen Butt, Noor Mohammad (8), 2020, text on tea-stained paper, 30 x 20 inches (76.2 x 50.8 cm)