Drawing

A series of five A5 mixed media drawings and two A1 drawings, made for The Drawing Box International touring exhibition, which lasted three years and traveled through several continents. The drawings have recently returned to Ireland and have been archived at NIVAL, the National Visual Arts Library at The National College of Art and Design (NCAD), in Dublin.

The subject of these drawings is the hidden life of mycelium, the substratum root network of mushrooms, with a web- like system spanning miles of underground terrain and functioning as a veritable internet of  information and support, as well  as a supplier of food and resources for the plant community.

 online also offered a wealth of striking black and white images of mycelia in all its dark splendour which were used as references.

The interconnectedness of mycelium mirrors 

the eco philosophical notion of the Symbiocene

, a natural state of being in which all life forms are dependent on each other and are therefore essential to the health of the system as a whole.

As humans, we have forgotten our inter dependence from all other non-human life forms, we recklessly consume and commodify life disregarding the fact that what we are ultimately undoing is our support network and our survival.

The Drawing Box, Online

The Drawing Box International Exhibition

The Drawing Box International Exhibition, Online

Mycelium & Symbiosis Series

Performance

Installation

Dance

Performative drawing and collaboration have been central to Paola’s work for years. The artist sees the body as the locus of both personal and cultural narratives. Institutional oppression begins with the control of bodies and with the regulation of drives and impulses. In a time of mass displacement and forced migrations the body can become the only home left to inhabit, and bodies, in revolt, war or natural disasters, perform in the spectacle of TV and online news.

, the artist explored the possibility of building an installation that also functioned as  a stage set in the theatrical  sense. Sound became part of  the drawing  performances, prompting synaesthetic responses. Collaborating with Fiona Quilligan was an initiation into  the choreographic process..  DJ and broadcaster Nigel Wood brought his vast world music collection and his expertise to the project. Thanks to Sami Moukaddem for offering the use of his music to this project.

Two earlier solo exhibitions, Natural Artifice at Soma Contemporary in 2014, and Body Drawings, at Pallas projects in Dublin in 2012, had displayed Catizone’s two hand drawings, performance videos and other drawings and paintings. Choreographer Fiona Quilligan was a guest performer at the openings.

Converge Diverge emerged from these earlier iterations. In The back Loft, Catizone’s earlier drawings were shown and new work was also made in situ, with the addition of sound added to the drawing process.

La Catedral Studios, Dublin, Ireland

Converge Diverge

Audiovisual

“Drawing is not a window on the world but a device for understanding our place in the universe”

Catizone’s work is the fruit of an ongoing practice that has been developing over several years. She became interested in drawing during her BA, when she started producing large drawings.

Scale added a physical element to her work,  with the artist drawing on her background in movement and dance. The large scale of the drawings  also gave an immersive feel to the process, a sense of being within the drawing, sensing its lines kinesthetically rather than visually controlling them from the outside.

The work gradually became more embodied, and she began to use choreographic parameters to give structure to long sessions of drawing. These became more performative, with the process as much part of the work as the finished pieces. She soon began to interact and collaborate with dancers, choreographers and musicians.

A number of students and dance professionals volunteered to work with Catizone in the Students Gallery in NCAD in March of 2013. The work was documented in film and, together with the drawings made, used for an exhibition in Pallas Projects in May of 2013.

The discordances between live, mediated, natural and unnatural are at the center of this work. The artist  questions the claims of authenticity and truthfulness in art: is live performance more real than video? Does the ‘halo’ of authenticity lend value to a work of art?  How much can we trust what we see? Especially when reality and information are mediated through the lenses, the editing tools and the technological apparatuses of contemporary media.

The ephemerality and directness of performative drawing responds to current values of chronic socio/economic uncertainty and of media filtering of truth. In drawing, direct experience and impermanence are proposed to the viewer, who becomes witness to the live emergence of lines.

This is contrary to tradition where drawing and painting have taken place in isolation, in the privacy of the studio. Through immediate gestures marks are conveyed without effects or technical artifice, in a quest for a truthfulness of mark making and of presence.

Embodied drawing has its roots in the practice of a line of artists like Robert Morris, Morgan O’Hara and Matthew Barney to name a few.

A performance in collaboration with DJ Nigel Wood and Choreographer Fiona Quilligan took place during the month of the exhibition.

Soma Contemporary, Waterford, Ireland

Natural Aritifice

Permanent collection. Garter Lane Museum, Waterford, Ireland

Untitled (two-hand drawing)

Natural Artifice

Ian Nolan and Paola Catizone collaborated to produce a film based on Paola’s two-hand drawing  performative  practice.

Catizone held multiple graphite sticks in each hand to create  complex drawings based on simple choreographic parameters:

Arm span determining the scale of the drawing

Repetition and rhythm underlying the movements

Nolan overlapped three layers of video to create the illusion of three identical female figures moving and drawing together,  reminiscent of the layering methods used in drawing and painting, with an hypnotic effect.

The spider-like triple figure that emerged seemed to be weaving a thick web of lines, patiently building through repetition.  Catizone’s notion of art- making as a meditative practice and of weaving as a metaphor for  repairing and healing are embodied in this work.

Nataraja is the many armed god of dance, one of the emanations of the god Shiva in the Hindy tradition. Catizone’s four decades of work as a yoga and movement facilitator influenced the spirit of the two hand drawings, which were at first performed to the sound of Indian Ragas.

For Collaborations 2014, Nataraja was  projected on a large sheet of Fabriano paper and presented  with  an accompanying  set of choreographic drawing directions and chunks of graphite for public use. The work became interactive, with public participation filmed and edited into the original video,and incorporated into the projection.

Smock Alley Theatre, Dublin, Ireland

Collaborations

Collaborations, Smock Alley Theatre, Dublin, Ireland

Nataraja

Catizone displayed a set of large, performative, two-hand drawings which she made over the space of two years. The drawings were made to either live music or to a selection of tracks curated by DJ Nigel Wood.

Wood played at the opening and a recorded selection of tracks used for the making of the drawings were played in the gallery for the week.

Choreographer Fiona Quilligan performed an embodied response to the work on the opening night also.

A short talk and Q&A session took place after the performance.

Paola Catizone

Drawing

Mycelium & Symbiosis Series, 2021

The Drawing Box International Exhibition, Online

Converge Diverge, 2015

La Catedral Studios, Dublin, Ireland

Natural Artifice, 2014

Soma Contemporary, Waterford, Ireland

Nataraja, 2014

Collaborations, Smock Alley Theatre, Dublin, Ireland

Body Drawings, 2013

Pallas Projects, Dublin, Ireland