Arounna Khounnoraj's work focusses on process, materials and methods of construction. She works with salt, paper, wire and reed to give her objects a soft, stiff and delicate quality. This exhibition features three distinct bodies of the artist's work.
"Multiple salt forms" is 180 small crocheted mohair forms caked in salt. Khounnoraj uses salt in order to see objects in different stages of transformation - from a brine to clusters of crystals. Each form spends weeks in and out of brine. After several weeks they begin to slowly crystallize - sometimes maintaining the crochet form and sometimes obliterating any visual trace of the substructure.
"Paper rice forms" is a large grouping of small paper works resembling grains of rice. The forms are grouped together in a cluster hung by paper string. The individual forms are made from gampi tissue - a very translucent Japanese paper that has a skin like quality. Each individual form has six sections that are sewn together. The large cluster shape is the result of the accumulation of all the smaller forms.
The "Imprint series" is five stitched drawings on paper. The stitches are small dashes of fine red thread that look similar to veins or fingerprints. The shape stitched on the paper is from one form alternatingly decreasing and increasing in size. Placed on different parts of each piece of paper, the shapes create rhythm and movement.
Arounna Khounnoraj is a native of Laos. She grew up in Canada and graduated from the Ontario College of Art and Design, the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design and received a Masters of Fine Art from the University of Waterloo. Her work is represented in the permanent collection of Cambridge Galleries and has been featured in our biannual Fibreworks juried exhibition of contemporary fibre art. She currently lives in Toronto.
IMAGE:
Arounna Khounnoraj
Large Salt Forms (detail), 2002.
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