Lina Iris Viktor: Blackness, Gold & Blue

Lina Iris Viktor is one of the most seminal black female artist in the world. Her artwork has inspired many in the contemporary art and fashion industry. In this Interview with The ROOT, Lina Iris Victor discusses her process, materials and inspiration.

Lina Iris Viktor chooses to work in a strictly limited world – it is a mythical one of her creation existing within the zen-influenced, blurred lines of the real and the imagined. The world she imagines is perfectly curated, puristic, and minimalist – it tends to cancel out materiality, to transfer it to the realm of the spiritual & the alchemical. Governed by a purist color palette, her work considers the natural laws, hermetic philosophies, mathematic & scientific principles, and seeks to instill a divine order to all around her.

Working across multiple mediums, she adheres to the colour palette of blue, black, white and 24-karat gold to create paintings, sculptural works, photography, performance works, and installations. Viktor’s work fuses apparent contradictions, synchronizing the monumental and the minuscule, decadent and the minimal, the spectacular and the invisible, seeking to heighten the experience of the spectator by creating immersive environments that transport the viewer into other worlds.

It is evident through her process of creation and self-documentation that Viktor spends time monitoring the intention of her art, and takes the responsibility of directing her ever-evolving public role as an artist.

'My interest is to work with patterns, because I believe that the universe is governed by pattern systems, like the ones that are so present in African textiles, which are communicated through inferred knowledge, rather than literal knowledge.’

“Since our ancestors first stood erect on the African savannah the back has towered skyward as an inspirational architectural template—providing visions, through skin and muscle, of the vertical spinal cord that is the Axis Mundi of the human form. The back has carried newborns and elders, food and water, wood and cloth, gold and silver. It has provided the strength to build palaces and pyramids, and transported wealth across forests, rivers, and deserts.”

Website: www.linaviktor.com