A new gem by globally acclaimed Lizette Chirrime
It’s been six years since Lizette Chirrime first worked on a screen print with us, and in those six years, she has been making a significant impression across the globe.
Her most recent triumph took place in Paris, where she was invited to participate in the prestigious Gulbenkian & Thanks for Nothing Residency, presenting workshops at the Pompidou Centre and delivering a presentation at the Louvre, in conversation with curator Cindy Sissokho. So we were privileged to have her back in the studio collaborating on a new piece, which is now, after countless iterations of colour testing, finally ready for release.
A convolution of colours
The reason for all the testing is more apparent when you’re familiar with Chirrime’s work and the nature of the screen printing process. Her fabric collages combine fragments of materials like shweshwe – itself a layered and beautiful history embodied in print – in vivid colour and intricate stitching, speaking of deeply personal narratives.
Translating this approach to screen print poses an intriguing challenge; in particular, it demands the careful overlapping of layers and varying opacities of ink to achieve the required complexity of colour so distinctive of Chirrime’s work.
To do justice to this complexity, we used eight individual colours (and therefore eight individual screens), which means that for every new colour introduced, an exponential number of additional hues is created – due to the layered, overlapping nature of the screen printing process. (One colour + one colour = three resulting colours.) In theory, these eight colours could give you a total of 255 colours, if you felt that way inclined.
Of course, one wants to balance complexity with cohesion, which is where the all-important iterations of colour testing come in. Enter Wim Legrand, our master printmaker, and his technical expertise, love of the process and commitment to the collaborative to-and-fro with the artist to get just the right result. Which is what we have with this brand-new beauty, The Fluid Dance. <BUY NOW>
