traditional collage and assemblage to create abstract social commentary, dream landscapes, and spaces . . .
A number of Landfair’s collages evoke the connections between human person, universe, and animal kin. In solitude and joy a distant nebulae and a woman’s head are juxtaposed like two family portraits hung on a wall. With self portrait (shedding) the analogical wing of a seed and a butterfly pair, the number “222” connecting them: the two wings, the two species, and then the doubling identify of those creatures with that of the artist herself as a self-portrait. The collage DNA consists of a dried rose blossom with a darkened and blurry landscape, a deep-field photograph of outer space dotted with galaxies, and the word “atoms” upside down. Between these objects of disparate form and scale is the continuity of relationship—material and genealogical that both the reference to atoms and the collages title (DNA) point use towards with brevity and expansive clarity. — AY
self portrait (shedding)
2021, collage on paper
solitude and joy
2019, collage on paper
DNA
2018-19, collage on paper
Artist Reflection —
I seek to take materials considered undesirable and redefine the worth and meaning remaining within them. I use traditional collage and assemblage to create abstract social commentary, dream landscapes, and spaces I consciously and subconsciously deal with everyday.
About N. Masani Landfair
N. Masani Landfair grew up in the industrial community of South Chicago, which contrasted constantly with the environmental teachings and ways of her Southern Grandparents. They lived uninterrupted with much of the Southern culture from their transition through the Great Migration. These influences shaped Landfair’s views of beauty and worth in the simplest forms of nature to the complexities of manmade dilapidations. Landfair has shown at the Museum of Science Industry’s Black Creativity (first place winner), Zhou B. Art Center, Prizm Art Fair, Global Art Project, Prizm Art Fair, Miyako Yoshinaga, and Third Coast Disrupted: Artists + Scientists on Climate. She lives and works between Chicago and Northern Georgia.
