Through a glass darkly: An essay by Bella Kesoyan
Devouring Time, blunt thou the lion's paws,
And make the earth devour her own sweet brood;
Pluck the keen teeth from the fierce tiger's jaws,
And burn the long-lived phoenix in her blood;
- William Shakespeare
The gaze of the architect, the gaze of the scholar, the gaze of the collector, the gaze of the teacher – or, in other words, the gaze of a human is the single most fascinating area of exploration within the history of art. It has come to symbolise the intimacy of knowledge and the role of the beholder in acquiring and building that knowledge. The house of Sir John Soane is where the idea of building the gaze into an architectural space reaches its climax, providing the viewer with a guiding hand – invisible to the eye yet fully present. Inasmuch as the understanding of a space is derived from the way of looking, the space itself directs our mind toward a certain perception. The house returns our gaze through countless mirrors, rays of sunlight penetrating stained-glass windows, and objects born in different eras - never meant to coexist yet sharing the same space, as if bringing the entire history of humanity to a single present moment: the moment we bear witness to.
For Nika Neelova, an internationally acclaimed, London-based artist, the story of Sir John Soane’s house does not begin with the first brick but with the eruption of Vesuvius and the immortalisation of the Roman town of Pompeii in 79AD. The frailty and temporality of human experience, and the way it relates to objects, materials and the architecture of space, form the cornerstone of her artistic practice. Through a glass darkly is the artist’s first institutional solo exhibition in London. Inspired by her residency at the Museum in 2024, Neelova explores the transfer of knowledge through objects and human perception. Studying the ways in which Soane entwined his personal history, his obsession-like love for Eliza, and even his physical condition with the house, but also with the broader history of humanity – inspired a new way of looking and a new approach to creation for the artist.
Delving into the history and etymology of language surrounding the term ‘vision’, Neelova goes back to the medium originally linked to the act of seeing and the eye itself: glass. For the artist, through glass, vision acquires the materiality of a physical object, akin to an act of creation for the sculptor. With her new body of work, created especially for the Museum, Neelova attempts to solidify the gesture of vision while simultaneously emphasising the historical connection between the medium, glass, and the act of seeing.
The centrepiece of the exhibition, Second Sight, inspired by the anatomical model of the eye, encapsulates both the precision and the completeness of a human gesture of sight, as well as the abstract notion of the threshold between the inner and outer worlds. Representing the doorway through which one perceives reality while holding the entire universe in its spherical shape, the eye represents the ultimate connection between nature and humanity. The artist also connects Second Sight to her experience at Sir John Soane’s Museum where ‘the gaze almost detaches from yourself and starts to wander on its own, becoming an independent vision and an independent faculty’. Like every creation of Neelova’s, Second Sight is meant to initiate a dialogue with the viewer. The work is built to be opened just like its historical counterpart, to be physically invaded, its inner substance revealed and studied, satisfying the curious nature of an explorer. Yet the investigation is meant to go beyond the form into the process of creation itself.
For Lacrimatories, Neelova worked in collaboration with Studio Marc Barreda to replicate ancient glassmaking techniques, combining sand from the Basilicata region in Italy, soda and the ashes of plants from saline environments. The phantoms of the living organisms present in these jewel-sized objects, cast from organic material, embody the inevitable and unbroken cycle of life and death. Among the Lacrimatories are a few whose fate is to dissolve with time. At their very conception, the glass was given a ‘disease’, making the vessels vulnerable to moisture. Filled with artist’s own tears, they become most precious through their contents, yet paradoxically least precious due to their transitory nature. In this simultaneous act of preservation and dissolution, Neelova questions the notion of presence and absence. What happens to our DNA when we are no longer here? The body disappears, yet tears remain sealed in glass. What happens when they evaporate, eroding the very vessel that preserved them?
In 1969, Robert Morris attempted to describe a new development in contemporary sculpture, a way of making rooted in process rather than in the object or an image. He argued that ‘to begin with the concrete physicality of matter rather than images allows for a change in the entire profile of three-dimensional art: from particular forms to ways of ordering, to methods of production and, finally, to perceptual relevance’.[1] While affirming the significance of the creative act in alignment with postmodernist minimalist sculptors like Morris and Eva Hesse, Neelova does not dematerialise the art object itself; rather, she anchors it in a connection to place and history that is beyond a bilateral relationship between an artist and her creations. In a manner similar to Soane, Neelova reclaims history through objects, integrating it into her own experience.
The arrangement of the exhibition carries distinct symbolism connected to an object in Soane’s house: the small sculpture of Hecate, the goddess of magic, crossroads, and the Moon. Referred to by Soane as ‘tri-form Diana’, she gazes simultaneously at the realms of the living, the dead, and the cosmic balance between them. Neelova mirrors the tripartite dialogue with the trinity of the loops in Knots (11-11), the materials, and three glass compositions. The library of materials used by the artist – burlap, wood, glass, and clay – are not merely natural substances meant to absorb human touch but are also borrowed from the spirit of Soane’s architecture, continuing the thread of textures found in the house. In the words of the artist: ‘I wanted to follow this rhythm and almost overload the room with smaller references for the viewer to find their own way through it. A map with different connections between thoughts, objects and what they could represent. A long line through history, a montage sequence borrowed from different snippets, and a strange loop with no beginning or end. Just like the ashes of Pompeii that both destroyed and preserved the city for eternity.’
[1] Notes on Sculpture, Part IV: Beyond Objects, Robert Morris, 1969
About the author: Bella Kesoyan is a writer, a scholar, and a collector of modern and contemporary art and artist’s books based in London. Through her doctoral research at the Courtauld Institute of Art Bella explores different ways in which artists engage with the medium of artist’s book, and how it affects their wider artistic practice. Bella also works directly with artists, curators, and museums to provide historical context to the works of art within exhibitions and collections.