Critical reflection
unit II
This begs the question: is this all part of the ‘process’? Or am I a little lost and in need of feeling grounded? I realized it all trickled down to a simple question: Why do I paint? And more specifically, why do I paint what I do?
But why do I paint?
With this question in mind, I listed down all the themes that had piqued my interest so far, these past two units:
- Memory ( Through collective, familial memory, haunting me and impossible to truly ‘unearth’, as well as that of a space, or an object)
- Post-colonial identity (Being from both Vietnam and Laos, my roots are deeply anchored in the history of French colonial rule) & Aimé Césaire’s concept of Thingification.
- Fischer and Derrida’s Hauntology. (The idea that we are haunted by ‘lost futures’ that could have been, but never came to pass. Resulting in a sense of nostalgia and temporal disjunction.)
- The colour Blue, specifically ultramarine, and pigments.
- Found objects, or ‘chance encounters’ with the outside world- during walks or ‘flâneries’.
- Collections, accumulation.
I then attempted to make out the connections between each topic, thinking back to my previous research, readings, and tutorials.
Perhaps the reason I paint is the process itself?
1. Scattering and gathering: the meanderings of my research and work
Writing about my work has slowly evolved from being a simple obligation, to part of the process in itself. Before starting a painting, I try to jot down ideas, possible connections and references. I never used to do this, I’ve always been impulsive with my work. But anchoring this practice into my process helps me answer my question: Why do I paint what I do?
In order to test my theory, I did not brainstorm my latest two paintings (‘Magopinaciophile', or ‘But Why do We collect’), and simply painted. No priming, no thinking, nothing: just paint. Resulted in a much looser paint stroke, but also a work that seemed less ‘anchored’ to the others. I struggled and fought to find meaning, and I did, but it felt less intentional than my other paintings. That’s not to say that I don’t change my mind as I work (show grave with no name process and end result), even when writing about it first.
“For though this experience made you, original victim floating through the sea’s abysses, an exception, it became something shared and made us, the descendants, one people among others. (...) Relation is not made up of things that are foreign but of shared knowledge.” (Glissant, 1990, p8)
His use of the expression ‘rhizome’ (rhizomatic) describes and exposes the complexity of the antillais identity. ‘The Rhizome is a plant that grows underground and has roots that grow around other roots. Glissant applies it to ‘creolization’, where roots meet and share cultural bounds to form an identity.’ (Verstreat, 2014) “Rhizomatic thought is the principle behind what I call the Poetics of Relation, in which each and every identity is extended through a relationship with the Other” (Glissant, 11)
While my ideas and work may seem scattered and distant, they work together, and make a whole: like the cultural rhizome that makes up our identities.
In his memoir, ‘Nina Simone’s Gum: a memoire of things lost and found’, Warren Ellis speaks of the connections formed by seemingly insignificant ‘things’. A piece of gum, chewed by Nina Simone during her last public concert, folded into her towel and hidden away in his attic for more than two decades, felt like a personal treasure. He couldn’t imagine anyone sharing the wonder he felt at the thought of owning this object, let alone the religious reverence at which he held it. And yet, it became a relic - toured around the world and present atop a marble plinth. ‘This is how relics work. Objects become the repositories of the spirit of the person who was associated with them.’ (Barker, 2023) They too, become a part of the cultural rhizome.
I merged images and quotes and created meaning where I didn’t realize there was. The quote is taken from the book ‘Re-Membering Places and the Performance of Belonging(s)’, (Calhoun, 1994: 19).
1a. What part of the story do I choose to tell?
There are so many stories to be told. Too many. “When you go for a walk, you can’t explore the whole city. You have to choose a direction” (Bunting-Branch, 2025).
Accepting that we exist within a giant rhizome of past and present experiences and ‘things’ is overwhelming. New questions arose: How do I choose what to communicate? And how do I set myself limits?
Throughout Unit 2, I’ve realised that these questions naturally come up in the context of group exhibitions. During our student union show, ‘The Spaces Between’, six of my peers and I explored the dialogues that arose amongst our works, when moved from our studios to a shared, public space. We communicated and compromised in order to choose an angle to collectively present our work.
We chose a different technique during our latest class pop-up show, opting to group students’ works into two, separate themes, instead of making everything communicate with each other as a collective. Yet, as we hung our work up, different complications arose: some people didn’t show up, and others had promised their paintings to other exhibitions, elsewhere. The themes we had chosen (inside/outside and Seeking) lost their meaning, works were swapped around and shifted. And it didn’t seem to matter in the end. I found that what did matter was how the paintings spoke to one another, and then to the audience. They didn’t need to be spoken for, and what they told was different from what the individual artist had initially planned.
Within the multiplicity of stories to be told, our paintings choose their own.
Urvi and Annabel collaborating on hanging Annabel’s work before the Pop-up show
Second Row: From A to B Gallery pop-up show, my work ‘Shoegaze IV’, oil on canvas, 2025, besides Saanthia Bulchandani’s work.
Third Row: Millbank tower pop-up show, my work ‘Mamie’, oil on wood panel, 2024 besides a sculptural piece, and our Student Union show: ‘The Spaces Between’.
The Poster, painting by Annabel Coekin, design by me.
My work in between our poster (which includes an illustration by Urvi Gajanan) and a series of oil paintings on paper by Urvi Gajanan.
While I was so focused on finding meanings and stories for my work, I forgot that the materials I used already spoke for themselves. The pigments I use, and the surfaces I paint on are imbued with contexts and histories of their own. When I paint on cardboard, I am not ‘just’ painting on cardboard: I am inserting my work into a specific context. The Arte Povera movement, for example. Every aspect of my work is part of these rhizomes I am attempting to materialise.
A few months ago, I attended a Postcolonial Political Economy lecture and seminar at King's College. Before the class, we were asked to read a passage from Warren Montag’s ‘Can the Subaltern Speak and Other Transcendental Questions’, in which I discovered the works of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (a Marxist thinker). She mentions that the abolition of the traditional Hindu practice of Sati (in which a widow immolates herself at her husband’s funeral pyre) by the British “has been generally understood as a case of the white man saving brown women from the brown men”. To put it in very short terms, the subaltern can speak, and doesn’t need to be spoken for.
While applying what I had learnt during this seminar, I saw links I hadn’t thought of before. Perhaps I needed to let my painting speak for itself too. Giving its materiality a chance to speak for itself.
3. On ‘loosening’ my work
During a one-on-one crit with Daniel Sturgis, I mentioned the desire to loosen my brush-strokes. In my previous two paintings (The Grave with no Name and Huh?), I had worked on bigger formats than I ever had before. I had also constructed the frame, stretched, and primed each canvas. This meant that more work was going into the physical preparation of the painting itself. I enjoyed this process, as something I was looking for, coming into this MA, was to feel closer to my art. I have a desire to have ‘control’ over as many of its aspects as possible. Yet, this control also meant I was more aware of the time and effort I had poured into the surface I would be painting on, and subsequently scared me. I was being too careful with what I was painting: the canvas was overwhelmed with brush-strokes (and so was I). I tried to counter this suffocation in Huh?, providing a window on the upper right corner of the canvas - revealing the gesso that lived under the layers of oil paint. After hearing this, Daniel Sturgis described me as a “hand-in-the-back-pocket-painter” as opposed to a “hard one painter”. He suggested I pivot back to working on paper, without worrying so much about preparing my surface.
I spent the next two weeks strictly painting on paper or cardboard. The result was a pivot back to my more ‘illustrative’ style, something I had decided to leave behind as I shifted towards a more paint-based art practice. Subconsciously, I had ruled out the possibility of closing the gap between my previous practice and my new one: in my mind, oil paint belonged on stretched canvas, and that was that.
Looking back, it’s quite ironic that my very first presentation during this course was about the ‘Bande dessinée, 1964 - 2024’ exhibition that had taken place at Beaubourg last year. This show put the canons of art history into question, giving comics and graphic novels a platform, and a space to exist within traditional artistic conventions. Today, partly thanks to the Centre Pompidou, the ‘9eme art’ (9th art, 8th being photography and 7th being cinema) has evolved in the general public’s mind, and can be considered an art-form of its own.
But this loose-ness came at a cost. The time I was dedicating to prepare the surfaces and materials I used when painting on canvas gave me the opportunity to think about my work. Priming a surface became a mediation of sorts. While I waited for it to dry, I would write. I needed to find balance within this re-discovered sense of spontaneity, and meticulous planning.
4. Moving towards Unit 3
In my first critical reflection, I had concluded that I had a newfound sense of clarity, coming into unit 2. This statement turned into a blatant lie- Unit two was a time of confusion and shifts. But these were crucial. It feels like the work I am putting out into the world now is much more intentional than ever before. I don’t think I have an answer to my question “Why do I paint?” just yet, but it feels like I am getting closer to it.
Akpene-Akussah, A-M. (2025). One-on-one crit with Alice Payen.
Baker, G. (2023). Nina Simone’s Gum. Fineartdrawinglca. Available at: https://fineartdrawinglca.blogspot.com/2023/05/nina-simones-gum.html [Accessed 19 May 2025].
Bunting-Branch, A. (2025). One-on-one crit with Alice Payen.
Ellis, W. (2022). NINA SIMONE’S GUM : a Memoir of Things Lost and found. S.L.: Faber And Faber.
Fairnington, M. (2025). Conversation with Alice Payen.
Glissant, É. (1990). Poetics of Relation. Ann Arbor Univ. Of Michigan Press.
Spivak, G.C. (1988). Can the Subaltern Speak? New York: Columbia University Press, pp.271–313.
Sturgis, D. (2025). One-on-one crit with Alice Payen.
Verstraet, C. (2017). Édouard Glissant. Scholar’s Blog, Postcolonial Studies @ Emory. Available at:https://scholarblogs.emory.edu/postcolonialstudies/2015/11/04/edouard-glissant/#:~:text=Glissant%20advocates%20the%20multiplicity%20of,Antillean%20people%20have%20been%20deprived [Accessed 19 May 2025].