Things I've seen recently. Things I like and think you might like too.

A collection of 10 interesting things I’ve seen recently. Enjoy!

1/

Rene Matíc’s solo show at South London Gallery. What does it mean to be British? What does it mean to be a Black skinhead? Two terms that are usually at odds with one another. Particularly enjoyed Rene’s film exploring their father’s ancestral roots and how inherited trauma is passed down.

2/

Some of the earliest evidence of the Chinese written script on bone oracles exhibited at Oxford’s Pitt Rivers Museum. I wondered about the magical rituals these bones were used in, 1000-and-something years ago. What did they predict. Who for. How the Chinese language has developed since then. Its writing systems becoming more abstract, less figurative. More fluid, like a signature repeated over hundreds of years.

3/

Self-portrait as part of this year’s Bloomberg Contemparies. I don’t know the artist but I get such a sense of this person is. The way they move, their gait. Their thoughts while contemplating their hand. The red frame – a lucky colour in Chinese culture. The way it brings out the green-tinged skin. The uncertain expression. As if they are thinking about whether to risk it all or not. Bluff or no bluff.

4/

Lynette Yiadom-Boakye at Tate Britain. This painting is so different for the artist. The haunting blue darkness. The repeated motif of the dogs creating an unconventional frame around the sitter. The casual, attentive relationship between human and animal. The way the dogs are lit up with fluorescent lines. The myriad shades of black and blue. I love this artist, always have and always will. She has taught me how to see a self-portrait of an artist in every portrait of someone else. The creativity of these imagined lives cast across the canvas. The wholeness of self revealed in one painting.

5/

This ingenious Hindu book. The pages can be turned two ways. Through the centre showing different characters but also through the concertina. Over a thousand years old. The beauty in how the pencil lines have been preserved all these years. The balance between 3-dimensional and flat illustration.

6/

Etel Adnan’s artist book. The Lebanese artist didn’t choose between expressing herself through either words or images. She dedicated herself to both as seen through her artist books. This was part of an artist book exhibition at The British Museum. She created graphical poems, some of which she realised in the form of leporellos, the folded horizontal paper that she first discovered in a Japanese shop in San Francisco, where she used to live.

7/

Guanyin, the Chinese Bodhissatva buddha. Bodhisattvas are enlightened beings who chose to stay on earth as accessible examples for Buddhist faithful to follow. My sister gave me a tattoo of Guanyin - it’s pronounced more like “Kwanyin” by the way. I really like this statue because despite obviously being stolen goods courtesy of some bigoted white man and housed in the British Museum, I am glad to have seen it because it shows how different Asian depictions of femininity are. This is a statue from around 1,000 years ago but look at her stature. The confidence, the oozing gait, the legs wide apart, the angular elbow on the knee. It’s everything we’re told isn’t “ladylike” in the West.

8/

Clothes made out of seal intestine by an indigenous community in Alaska. The craftsmanship is breathtaking. The way such a naturally delicate material is handled with care and sewn together. The embroidery details which must have taken hundreds of hours. The time it takes to create a staple item of clothing that can withstand centuries. The avante-garde design that wouldn’t be out of place in a Balenciaga show this AW22. The meticulous attention to detail where functionality meets design meets necessity.

9/

Jade hair accessories used in Ming dynasty China. So beautiful, so ornate. Hairpins are an important symbol in Chinese culture and are associated with many Chinese cultural traditions and customs. They were also used as every day hair ornaments in ancient China; all Chinese women would wear a hairpin, regardless of their social rank. The materials, elaborateness of the hairpin's ornaments, and the design used to make the hairpins were markers of the wearer's social status. Hairpins could be made out of various materials, such as jade, gold, silver, ivory, bronze, bamboo, carved wood, tortoiseshell and bone, as well as others.

10/

Drawings of wood grains by Carroll Dunham. So simple a concept but when put onto blank paper it takes on a whole new feeling. Dunham wanted to record the materiality of the wood, but in doing so, he creates a whole new effect through the paper. I thought it was quite alien-like when I first saw it. I like it because for a long time I didn’t realise it was a drawing of wood grain. It was only after I read the caption did I realise that it’s something so ingrained into everyday life.