In Al Fahidi Historical Neighbourhood, House 10
Portable Horizons gathers together recent paintings, fabric works, experimental embroideries, sculpture, and poems. The exhibit mixes genres in order to reinvigorate each: paintings next to quilts, sculpture juxtaposed with embroideries, and so on. She refers to textile works as sculptural and “soft drawings”, and to the figurative works as abstract in that the objects are devoid of context, horizon, and weight. The word-based paintings forefront the ephemeral nature of speech and writing—subject to interpretation, mishearing, translation, and revision.
In Abu Dhabi, where clothing, sidewalks, and architectural patterns are repetitive, modular, and where the daily adhan structures time, Magi has come to a somatic understanding of abstraction not as an art historical notion of “coming after representation.” Rather, she has become interested in “textility”—repetitive patterning and concern with surface instead of focal point, scene, narrative, background and foreground.
Jill Magi has a well-established practice as an experimental poet and her book projects, often described by critics as “documentary,” combine history and lyrical narrative. Portable Horizons breaks with this practice. Borne of repetitive labor, these works do not abide by received notions of temporality and location, and they problematise sentiment and narrative depth in their return, again and again, to surfaces.
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