No Man’s Land

for WAWAW | Writing Art Writing Art Writing: When Language Becomes Material

Exhibition and symposium curated by Lizzie Lloyd  for WITTA (writing in / to / through art)

NO Man’s Land is a first collaboration with sculptural installation artist based at spike island, Huma Mulji: continuing through practice a conversation we had about liminal spaces and ecotones—fertile transition zones like estuaries where ecosystems meet.

Ecotones reminded us that borders are not barriers but rich, porous spaces of connections. Original no man’s land where certainty dissolves.

In the corridor gallery, turned estuary, an encounter between sea and river, land and sea, through a fertile negotiation of territory/ authorship/ bleeding / leaking and trickling into and out of Be/Longing and Be/coming.

This collaboration became an exercise in ecotoning, in negotiating in space our connections to place, inner and outer, past and present, through words written in clay, ash and graphites, on walls and floors.

“ an ecotone of giving and taking. Theirs is a watery uncertainty: lungs filled; breaths held and only gradually released. The tide that was once high, has now retreated, leaving behind English and Urdu deposits in smeared clay and blown ash (Lizzy Lloyd)

WAWAW | Writing Art Writing Art Writing: When Language Becomes Material explores different approaches to working with language as material: across a symposium, a performance salon and the exhibition,timed to coincide with the major artist’s book fair BABE (Bristol Artist Book Event). (Press release).