Saud Baloch

We are tied to the spaces we call home, and to the people who belong to us; so much depends on the fortunes of the things we love. If suddenly these relationships are broken off, if our connection with a person or place upon whom we depend is severed, our lives will be devastated irreversibly. For a long time I have watched such separations, deprivations and displacements occurring, and as an artist I feel forced to consider them and the strain they place on ordinary people. The work I produce responds to them, and every piece for me becomes a kind of evidence I can present of events whose occurrence is barely acknowledged. Although the origins of my ideas can be found in my surroundings, I see the humanitarian crises with which I am concerned recurring in countries throughout the world.

The materials I use as a means to explore these preoccupations matter greatly, and my interest in exploiting their properties is a thread that connects both the sculptures and the drawings. The clay from which I sculpt my figures makes me think of earth, mud and the origins of life, whereas gold is the colour of hopes and riches, symbolic of an inheritance which is as much a burden as a benefit. The explosive texture of the stone used for smaller pieces finds an echo in my large-scale drawings. Previously, I used jute boris (sacks) to resemble human forms in torn and contorted postures. The shapes made by draped and hanging jute bags and suspended cloths were also in my mind when making the drawings, but in these works such materials appear in deteriorated, tattered and moth-eaten states or become abstracted, forming dark, almost fathomless cavities.

https://saudbaloch07.wixsite.com/website