Lina Iris Viktor is an Italy-based Liberian-British visual artist who is known her paintings, sculptures, photographs, and performance art. She moved to the south of Italy in 2022[1] Viktor combines ancient and modern art forms to create multimedia paintings.[1] She does this by combing an ancient technique called gilding with photography and painting to create “symbols and intricate patterns."[1] She overlays 24-karat gold over dark canvases to create works with “layers of light”.[1] Allison K. Young in Haven. A Hell. A Dream Deferred says that these multimedia paintings suggest “the socio-political and historical preconceptions surrounding ‘blackness’ and its universal implications”.[1]The New York Times described her paintings as "queenly self-portraits with a futuristic edge".[2]
Biography
Lina Iris Viktor was born to parents from Liberia, West Africa.[3] Her parents left Liberia because there was a civil war going on in the 1980s, which is why they moved to the U.K.[4] She traveled frequently as a child and for numerous years lived in Johannesburg, South Africa.[1] She studied film at Sarah Lawrence College and photography at the School of Visual Arts in New York City.[5] Lina Iris Viktor in 2016 was thinking about creating artwork that corresponds to the history of Liberia, but it took around a year for her to articulate this concept because of how “complex and misunderstood” Liberia is.[1] In 2017, The New Orleans Museum of Art contacted Viktor for a solo show exhibition that “speaks to interconnected histories of West Africa and the American South”.[1] Viktor’s solo exhibition is titled A Haven. A Hell. A Dream Deferred.[1] In an Interview with Ekow Eshun, he talks about inviting different artists including Lina Iris Viktor in 2022 to be a part of a show titled The Black Fantastic located at the Hayward Gallery in London.[6] Eshun in this interview said that Viktor came to visit the Hayward Gallery and was immediately inspired to create "two new sculptural works and three new paintings for the show".[6]
In 2018, Viktor was involved in a legal dispute with Kendrick Lamar involving appropriation of her imagery for the video for "All the Stars" by SZA and Lamar. The dispute was settled.[7][8]
Viktor integrates painting, sculpture, photography, sculpture, and gilding to portray the history of Liberia while also investigating "the relationship between art, prophecy, and spiritual belief".[10] Viktor is inspired by source imagery including "astronomy, Aboriginal dream paintings, African textiles, and West and Central African myth and cosmology".[11] Specifically in her series A Haven. A Hell. A Dream Deferred she discusses the "mythic history" of Liberia.[10] In a book titled Africa State of Mind Ekow Eshun says Viktor "knits together events and images both factual and fantastical, [and] conjures Liberia as an uneasy utopia, both a paradise lost and cautionary tale of pathology of colonization".[10] In Viktor's multi media paintings the central figure pay homage to the figure of Libyan Sibyl.[10] The Libyan Sibyl is a classical mythological figure that can depict the future.[10] The Libyan Sibyl figure is also "used as a common motif in the art and literature of the American abolitionist movement".[10] Viktor uses iconography from Liberia and the United States in hopes to emphasize "the depth and complexity of African history and experience".[10]
Notable works
A Haven. A Hell. A Dream Deferred Series
In this series Viktor creates mixed media paintings to depict the history of Liberia.[1] Throughout the series she incorporates bold red lines to mimic "tropical foliage" and geometric patterns to imitate "the crimson stripes of the Liberia's flag".[1] She uses colors red, white, and blue "to invoke the shared national iconography of both Liberia and the United States".[1] Viktor says she wants to create a different perspective on "lost narratives" that connect the United States to Liberia.[1] The central figure in these paintings represent the Libyan Sibyl, and this figure is wearing "patterns of Dutch Wax fabrics".[1] The title of this series is inspired by Montage of a Dream Deferred by Langston Hughes.[1] The phrase "A Dream Deferred" is supposed to represent "the unrealized dreams and broken promises that punctuate Black American experience".[1] Viktor hopes that this series educates others about the misconceptions of Liberia and the importance of the African Diaspora and its cultural history.[1]
Third
This is part of the A Haven. A Hell. A Dream Deferred Series and depicts a Libyan Sibyl "beside Liberia's flag, as if posing for a formal portrait".[1] Viktor experiments with portraiture and uses "uses textile patterns as backdrops" and uses similar photographic compositions from West African photographers like Oumar Ka, Seydou Keita, Malick Sidibe, and Mamma Casset.[1]
Fourth
This is part of the A Haven. A Hell. A Dream Deferred Series and illustrates a Libyan Sibyl figure holding a book in her left hand.[1] The book, the robe, and the figures' posture are iconographic elements that pay tribute to the mosaic floor in the Siena Cathedral titled Sibylla Lybica.[1]
2016: The Woven Arc, The Cooper Gallery Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts.[1]
2016: Art of Jazz: Form, Performance, Notes, The Cooper Gallery and Harvard Art Museums, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts.[1]
2017: Lines, Motions, and Rituals, Magnan Metz, New York, New York.[1]
2017: Back Stories, Mariane Ibrahim Gallery, Seattle, Washington.[1]
2018: Re-Significations: European Blackamoors, Africana Readings, Zisa Zona Arti Contemporanee (ZAC) Manifesta European Contemporary Art Biennial 12, Palermo, Italy[17]
2018: The Artsy Vanguard, Dior and Bergdorf Goodman, New York, New York.[1]
2018: Hopes Springing High — Gifts Of Art By African American Artists, Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, CA[18]
^ abEdwards, Caroline (2023). "Reflecting on the Black Fantastic: An Interview with Ekow Eshun". Dagenham: Science Fiction Foundation. 52 (145): 64–79.
