Fluffy
January 29 - March 12 2022
sweet pea Arts, 58 Pier St
Catalogue Essay by Miranda Johnson
Hay fever is caused by the fluffy pollen from flowers, gently whispering into your sinuses. It causes a physical ejection, liquid running from the eyes and nose, and an explosion of air forced from the mouth. Some people say that a cure for hay fever is to eat a lot of honey from the local area. This is meant to be a way for your body to adapt, to become accustomed to the particularities of the pollen surrounding you and internalise its power.
This cure is a myth, but it’s one that has endured because of how much sense it seems to make anyway. It makes sense that we want to find equilibrium between our bodies and our environments, not treating the relationship as one of oppositional force. That the cure is a dose of sweetness makes it all the more enticing.
There is a softness to the blending of the colours and the imagery in Luisa Hansal’s works that comprise Fluffy, works that also evoke a sense of sweetness. Love-hearts are featured in almost every work. They are the focus of love capsule, which shows us four hearts, each a different colour, tightly huddled together in a green cocoon, a glow emanating from their shared stem – or is it an umbilical cord? Elsewhere, in birds suddenly appear [for Nicky] and other friends aren’t like you, circular ripples repeat and expand, like a stone thrown into a pond. Luisa’s blending of the paint softens edges, everything slightly out of focus. The ripples are perhaps a celestial body, maybe a full moon, pulsing and glowing with mysterious power.
The works are imbued with delicate pulses of emotion, with a mysterious quality, a portent. But it’s not a heavy feeling either, the softness of the image instead creates a gentle landing for the emotions rather than a sudden pang. Its softness is its way of entering your body, delicate tendrils penetrating the inner layers of your flesh. This is the power of Fluffy.
Cute, fluffy, twee – all these terms denote the opposite of substance, of something material to grasp onto and place into context, to critique. We are supposed to feel guilty for consuming too much fluff, too many things that don’t improve the brain or body, instead letting it relax or slacken. This sense of guilt is something that Luisa has also grappled with in creating these works. Through her intuitive approach to painting, she is also enacting a process of unlearning her institutional art-school training, which encouraged a focus on research, critique, and placing one’s practice within an existing art historical lineage. The institutional approach requires some understanding of the outcome prior to making the work, and the outcome is intended to be one of substance, seriousness and critique.
The works in Fluffy have different intentions. Their final forms emerge as surprises sometimes to Luisa herself, their connection to the original idea often shrouded in mystery and forged by constantly refining her blending process by letting things happen quickly, loosely, layering again and again. This approach and process of unlearning and letting go is not easy. In fact, the works have been some of the most challenging Luisa has made. Fluffy doesn’t mean easy. It’s hard to be gentle, vulnerable, genuine – to share your inner world without the shield of institutional critique.
Luisa calls the process of creating the works for Fluffy a lesson in loosening up and trusting the process, embracing the discomfort inherent to experiencing uncertainty. This lesson also extends to the experience of viewing the works. Leaning into the feelings and letting them lead – letting each symbol, gradient, or blended line repeat across multiple works, echoing itself and becoming stronger in its mysterious quality – invites a letting-go of expectation and the pressure to derive specific meaning or a fixed narrative from the works. There is a discomfort in this too, in letting your feelings drive your response without presupposition, creating a subtle shift in your psyche.
Maybe we don’t always need to reach for some sort of universal truth, scientifically proven facts. Maybe emotions, symbols, and things that make sense to us – even if we can’t explain it – create their own form of magic. A drop of honey onto the tongue might not cure your hay fever, but it might give you a dose of something you didn’t realise you needed. By imbibing the power of fluffy, letting its sweetness in and your body adjust, you can find a different source of comfort.
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Miranda Johnson is a curator and writer based in Boorloo/Perth. She is currently Hatched Curatorial Fellow at the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts and was previously Chairperson and a founding member of Cool Change Contemporary, and a director of Moana Project Space, both artist-run initiatives. She also writes regular reviews for Seesaw Magazine and ArtsHub.