KD: If I Am Scared, We Can’t Win
By Dr Rebecca Daniels
When I walked through the front door of Kate Daudy’s house recently, she handed me two delicate crocheted four-leafed clovers. ‘They have arrived today from Syria, they are the latest batch of doilies I asked them to make.’ Kate told me. Daudy’s optimism radiates from her even when referring to the Syrian refugee crisis. There is always hope, or miracles, even in the most desperate of circumstances. Her long held belief that we can all make a difference if we do something small continues with her Syrian project, long after the exhibition is over. Through the sale of her work she continues to fund Syrian refugee woman to make the doilies so that they earn a little money of their own — a tiny gesture that may improve their day to day life. Daudy art is not just a useful tool for thinking but also in this case an aid for the communities where it is made.
Daudy is not into grand gestures because it is too easy to evade responsibility with the belief ‘I cannot change anything’. Daudy firmly believes we have a social responsibility to everyone in the world. She sees that at some point we are all connected and this underpins all of her multi-disciplinary practice. While Covid 19 might represent a little storm in a teacup in terms of world history, living through the pandemic, suddenly makes sense of what Daudy feels. Covid 19 kept us apart physically, for the first time in my life I am not allowed into the country of my birth, but in some strange way it has also connected us globally as we listen to death tolls, how Governments handle the crisis and news of vaccine rates. It is, sadly, a shared experience.
When I get home, I hold the emerald and forest green doilies in my hand and find myself mesmerised by them. The perfect clover formed of immaculate and delicate crochet stitches give the impression that they were created in a cozy, domestic environment. Rather, they were created in the living hell of Homs and Aleppo in Syria, that on top of war, now has to deal with rising Coronavirus cases and more death. This jarring realisation jolts me. In Irish culture, the four-leafed clover is a powerful symbol because the plant is so rare. Legend accords it magical properties of bringing good fortune and it is believed to ward off evil spirits. I do wonder if there is a message to us sent by these Syrian women. Daudy uses the colourful round multicoloured doilies to create a series of works such as This and Lucky You.
They recall a traditional tree of life, the vivid colours and textures are layered to create a festival of joyous colour. This is no coincidence because during lockdown Daudy has been reading the Book of Revelations. Here in verse 22: ‘On either side of the river is the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations’. The tree of life is an appropriate leitmotif of Daudy’s practice as it is a symbol in which most religions and peoples of the world have a strong tradition and importantly, despite their differences, a fundamental connection. We are all connected is Daudy’s mantra.
In her new exhibition, that will appear exclusively online before being published in hardback in April 2021, the miracle takes centre stage and is explored through a series of drawings, artworks and texts that trace their history from the ancient world through historical religious painting to the sublime in the everyday. ‘I Knew You Would Come Back To Me’ is the fruit of Daudy’s reflections during Covid 19. During lockdown Daudy has been reading extensively about philosophy and religion. C.S.Lewis, Esther de Waal, Marina Warner, Karen Armstrong, Lars Muhl, Dostoevsky, Peter Schjeldahl, Seamus Heaney, Mary Oliver, Pema Chodron, Martin Lings, Carl Jung, John Cage, Alice Oswald, Nick Laird, Don Paterson, Zadie Smith. Her reading has not been limited to the Western tradition but also extended to Asia, where Lao Tse and particularly the Taoist philosophy and poetry are staples. While it might seem strange to give a mini bibliography of her reading it seems hugely important in understanding her art as Daudy’s practice is so literary and her reading directly informs her work. She is a fervent lover of music, especially trash pop music. Indeed, the title “I Knew You Would Come Back to Me” is the title of a song by Taylor Swift.
Daudy studied Egyptian literature and magic, including the Book of the Dead for her exhibition ‘It Wasn’t That At All’, her artistic response to the blockbuster ‘Tutankhamun: Treasures of the Golden Pharaoh’. The show was held to great acclaim at the Saatchi Gallery in 2020, during which time Daudy became interested in hieroglyphs. This has led her to try to teach herself Aramaic during the lockdown and explore texts written in, what she points out is not infrequently referred to as ‘the language of the angels’. It is also the most ancient language of the Middle East and could be seen as the root language for connecting many ancient cultures and even modern languages, an aspect undoubtedly not lost on Daudy. Ideas and excerpts from her research often appear in her book of miracles. Titles are also carefully considered and created and add an additional layer of meaning. Her reading records, not just books which influenced her, but also allude to her thinking and her creative process. They are intended to connect the viewer directly to her. Daudy’s aim is for the book to be an ‘invitation to start a conversation about issues that you feel are important’. It is a thought-scape, if you like, looking at life through different cultures and religions. The book is also intended to act as a record of the Covid 19 year, this strange, unsettling and all too often tragic time in all our lives.
This period has been a particularly difficult time for Daudy. She suffered a significant bereavement at the beginning of the pandemic and is still exploring the emotional aftermath of visiting the refugee camps in the Middle East. Suddenly, everyone has become acutely aware of the transience of life and as we are forced to stay safe at home, many people have commented how they now appreciate the little things in life so much more. Daudy certainly feels this and has enjoyed the prolonged time together with her family. This is countered for her by the doilies, stacked up in bags around her studio, the vibrant and joyous colours a constant reminder of those whose refugee status has left them homeless, adrift, unwanted but alive and, surprisingly, still with hope. One of the things that astounded Daudy about the refugee camps was the people’s ‘bravery and beauty of spirit and dignity and faith’. With faith we have hope and so Daudy believes that we have a duty to respect people’s faith even if it is different to our own.
During my last studio visit, just before the latest lockdown, for the first time Daudy told me some stories of her time in Syria visiting refugee camps, rehabilitation centres for those who had been tortured and visiting hospitals where people, including young children, are recovering from horrific and indescribable injuries. This journey started with a simple project about ‘home and identity’ but transformed into something life changing for Daudy. Her work, titled ‘Am I My Brother’s Keeper?’, is a United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) standard issue tent, which many refugee families at the Za’atari camp in Jordan call home. Daudy has embroidered the outside with quotes from conversations she had with some of the refugees she met in the camps. Incongruously, there are also hollyhock flowers embroidered and applied along the side of the tent and these reflect the flowers some refugees plant to make the camps feel more like home. They represent the spirit of survival. This project has been profoundly meaningful and important to Daudy. The work was first displayed at St Paul’s Cathedral in London and the project expanded her practice into organising conferences, performances and talks about the crisis and what it means to be a human being. Out of respect for their work Daudy donated the tent to the UNHCR and it is currently touring the world, highlighting the plight of the refugee. It has been so well received in Spain that it is now studied as part of the national curriculum.
Daudy’s experience taught her to value the small things in life, pay attention, and try to be positive. We often see our everyday tasks and even our existence on earth as pointless but it isn’t, Daudy tells me emphatically. ‘It is a philosophy of humility’. She tells me the story of a man whose humility was astounding and inspiring. His actions saved at least 60 lives, yet he is humble and does not consider himself a hero. The men in a small village in Syria were rounded up and killed and were later found outside the village, their bodies horrifically and disrespectfully stacked up like a Jenga tower. This man realised that the women of the village would be attacked and raped and so he went to the village and walked these women to the other side of Syria to a refugee camp. While Daudy was visiting this man she noticed the children outside his tent had a swing. How did they get a swing in a refugee camp where people had nothing and thought it incredible to see a pen? The man told her that children needed to smile and have fun and so he used his only UN issue blanket to make a swing for them. This incredible person was ‘miraculous’, but he could not comprehend how his actions had been so heroic. Daudy shows me a photo of the children swinging, laughing and acting normally, a priceless gift from this man, who thought nothing of it.
Follow Daudy through her book of miracles, the everyday things she sees in her world, that delight and excite her and try, as her reading of Titus Lucretius Carus’s poem instructed, to envision them anew again. From the crumbled blue plastic bag that represents the corner shop, a keystone of British émigré culture, to the miracle of her notes that had disappeared and miraculously reappeared on her iphone — a very 21st century miracle but one to which we can all relate! To her fingerprint outlined by a humorous written text ‘I Am The One Doing This’ a symbol of our uniqueness now used to unlock our personal technical world. A chance encounter at the doctor; when Daudy greeted a passer-by and was presented with a bag of apples a gesture which touched Daudy yet also reminds me of Snow White and the poisoned apple. The gesture has connotations with ancient fairy stories. If we strip back invention have we changed that much? Walt Whitman’s poem Miracles was written in 1856 and celebrates the everyday, in a manner which to me resonates with Daudy’s vision:
Why, who makes much of a miracle?
As to me I know of nothing else but miracles,
Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan,
Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky,
Or wade with naked feet along the beach just in the edge of the water,
Or stand under trees in the woods,
Or talk by day with any one I love, or sleep in the bed at night with any one I love,
Or sit at table at dinner with the rest,
Or look at strangers opposite me riding in the car,
Or watch honey-bees busy around the hive of a summer forenoon,
Or animals feeding in the fields,
Or birds, or the wonderfulness of insects in the air,
Or the wonderfulness of the sundown, or of stars shining so quiet and bright,
Or the exquisite delicate thin curve of the new moon in spring;
These with the rest, one and all, are to me miracles,
The whole referring, yet each distinct and in its place.
To me every hour of the light and dark is a miracle,
Every cubic inch of space is a miracle,
Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with the same,
Every foot of the interior swarms with the same.
To me the sea is a continual miracle,
The fishes that swim-the rocks-the motion of the waves-the ships with men in them,
What stranger miracles are there?
Whitman’s contrast between the small miracles contained in both the urban and the natural world resonate with Daudy and, coincidentally, feature in a lot of her subject-matter. Daudy’s primary love is the natural world as can be seen in the inspirational for a lot of her work. Landscape is an important part of her oeuvre and its inclusion crosses media and boundaries. From small scale drawings and large textural panels to conceptual works, which even feature ephemeral objects physically placed in a landscape. The very root of some of her work, like that of nature, is the celebration of what is ephemeral, intended to wither and decay. Daudy is equally comfortable with art that lasts for minutes, such as a performance piece enacted at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, or a procession with thousands of people dancing that are now only memories. Chinese calligraphers practice by writing in water, she reminds me.
For Daudy, trees form the subject of many works in this book of miracles. For her a tree is unique as it is a form of continuity in space. One of the exciting aspects of Daudy’s creative spirit is that her subjects can be a voyage of discovery that can take you on a global journey as many of the background stories to these miracles reveal. Hope is the title of a delicate drawing of a tree bearing ripe fruit, referencing the Book of Revelations and the Tree of Life, as depicted in the Tapestry of the Apocalypse in Angers. The extraordinary tapestry tells the story of the Book of Revelations in ninety panels and amidst all the carnage of earthquakes, wily and evil beasts, murders, pestilence and death, the one thing that remains vibrant is the luxuriant vegetation of the natural world that fill the background of the panels. They are at odds with the subject-matter but offer a message that the world will continue to flourish, despite everything (which for us, also includes the uncertainty of climate change as represented in the image. “What Are We Going Through?” of the ‘Black Summer’ bushfires, the worst and deadliest in Australian history that seemed to foretell ominously the horrors of 2020). These parallels give a sense of connection across time and space and are important to Daudy. They also show that the lessons of history remain of pivotal importance to the current world.
Daudy’s breathtaking wedding dresses with embroidered interventions, elucidate the importance of history to her. When her friend found a couture wedding gown abandoned in a charity shop he brought it back to her studio they both reflected on how violent it was to have discarded such an important souvenir. It reminded Daudy of photographs of soldiers who had died in World War 1, often shown in uniform on their wedding day. Recording life cut short, and the widow mourning, the ivory silk now symbolically turned black. Daudy alludes to this by embroidering a Wilfred Owen poem on the back of the dress, the virgin silk now tarnished by blood and dirt, a poet whose own life ended just a week before Armistice Day. The burnt out decimated tree trunk became one of the principal images of the slaughter of man and of nature in World War 1. Whether it was photographs of the annihilated battle fields or in paintings such as those by Paul Nash, whose stark empty trees are a memorial to the loss of humanity and natural life. Daudy has created a fitting commemoration for the centenary of World War 1, that considered not only the life of the soldier but also of the life of those left behind to deal with the grief. This dress is universal and represents the human cost of all wars.
‘Everything Happens For the First Time’ represents time through the analogy of the dandelion clock. Tradition says that with each exhalation some seeds of the dandelion ball fly away. Each breath then counts as an hour and when the seeds are all blown away, and the number of breaths taken to do this are counted, then the time is told. That each person will take a different number of breaths to remove the dandelion ball celebrates the transient nature of life; for some in one blow it has gone. Daudy values the abstract nature of time — that we are just a small part of life, individually no more nor less important than we should be. ‘like cogs in a wheel’. The structure of the white tree was intended to reflect this idea as it was deceptively labour intensive. Furthermore, the illustration in the book of miracles belies the reality that the work is 240cm high and has a commanding physical presence.
The myriad of flowers are intricately and individually cut out and then layered on top of each other, sometimes with up to twelve cut flowers forming a single layer, which combine to create a three-dimensional effect. Then these flowers are painstakingly sewn onto the cloth panel. The fine details of Daudy’s trees are inspired partly by Renaissance paintings. A long thread of her work explores the often overlooked landscapes and backgrounds of the works of this period, which are mainly allegorical. Daudy has made an entire body of work on this theme, which we will discuss in a separate essay. An example here is the background of Giorgione’s paintings, Portrait of a Young Woman, which pays great attention to the detailed laurel tree branch behind her face and undoubtedly has some symbolic meaning that has been lost because we do not know the identity of the sitter. The landscape in his Venus and Cupid in a Landscape which celebrates the diversity of nature and where the forest of flowers are intricately and texturally painted. Daudy refers also to these works as tools for thinking, in the tradition of Chinese Scholars’s Rocks. The build of up layers of felt to form texture are an important part of her oeuvre and can be seen in several works in the book.
One of the most atmospheric is The Moon, the layers of felt seem to form the shape of the craters on the moon’s surface, itself a rock, and the way the colours are built up seem to reflect its glistening light.
There is a substratum of intriguing and often deeply challenging meaning that lies beneath Daudy’s joyous, bright and aesthetically beautiful work. The miracle of the orange has two powerful background stories that were the source of including it as one of her miracles. When Daudy returned to London from Jordan she had to go to her local supermarket. The contrast between the two worlds was overwhelming and she stood transfixed for hours by all the food in the aisles and simply could not move. She was struck by the contrast between the two worlds; the overwhelmingly large piles of different foods we can choose from in London and the lack of any choice of food in the refugee camps. The idea of food and contested territories also exists in the miracle of the orange as groves of oranges, branded to represent the golden sunshine in Jaffa, where originally farmed by the Palestinians and later both Jews and Arabs had earned money through this industry. More recently, the groves have been controlled by the Israelis. A committed peacenik, Daudy’s work, including that with Kostya Novoselov on ‘Everything Is Connected’, underlines the idea that there is always hope of resolution not matter how bleak the situation currently seems. Her second story is about a friend from Jaffa whose family grew oranges and Daudy visited. The beauty of the orange groves spread as far as the eye could see. She recalls the landscape, the colour of sunshine in the fruit and the shared connection with her friend as they shared an orange together. Daudy’s book brings home that such shared experiences are inherent to the fabric of our existence.
Her explorations have also taken Daudy to the Spiritual and the abstract. Hilma af Klint is a longstanding inspiration, thanks to photographer Adam Fuss sending Daudy the catalogue from LA when the works first appeared in 1986. It now appears that af Klint was the first Abstract Artist creating her diagrammatic abstract works guided by Spirits. However, unlike the male abstract artists working a decade later, af Klint chose not to display her works and instructed that they not be exhibited for twenty years after her death. She was told by Carl Jung to put them away, that the world needed to catch up with her in order to appreciate her work — and it took just under a century for it to do so. Spiritualism is closely linked to the beginnings of abstraction and Malevich intended his black square to be Spiritual. In his 1915 exhibition he famously placed his ultimate Suprematist work across the corner of a room, in lieu of the traditional Russian icon. The chaos of World War and bereavement, reminiscent of the wedding dresses of Daudy’s previous oeuvre, were of fundamental importance to the dramatic rise of Spiritualism. Af Klint’s closer involvement in Spiritualism was, as with the case of so many at that time, a result of her sister’s death. For Daudy, it cements her idea that we are all one regardless of time and space. This is the subject of the miracle of the ‘Woman who bought a Bar and found a 19th century Portrait in the Attic which looked exactly like herself’. Such strange events happen frequently and I remember a card my grandmother sent me of a photo of a girl standing in a landscape. I looked at it and thought I don’t remember that dress or standing there. When I turned the card over it was a postcard from Russia and I genuinely thought the photograph was of me.
Daudy’s delicately traced Underground is an image of the everyday that resonates with all Londoners. It is an extraordinary map, that to me and many others is a piece of abstract art as well as a functional object. It is so iconic and imbued with cultural meaning that it defines London. Recently contemporary artists have used it as a found object in their own practices and Daudy used it to create a map of sites with Egyptian artefacts around London to coincide with the Tutankhamun exhibition. Keith Coventry’s wit links him to Daudy as his images, seemingly based on Malevich, are actually based on the position of buildings in the UK, often in Council Estates. Daudy refers to Coventry as well as Malevich in ‘The Miracle of the Three Chocolate Bath Olivers’ and draws attention to the abstract shape of the construction of a building in her ‘Miracle of Reinforced Concrete’.
As well as working on new major public commission, Daudy is preparing for a show at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park opening in September 2021, on the theme of Chaos. This is an art and science project alongside the Nobel laureate, Kostya Novoselov, (with whom she recently recorded a series of podcasts WONDERCHAOS). Their first encounter followed Daudy’s first visit to CERN to see the large particle collider, questioning the theoretical physicists about what it means to be a human being. Novoselov and Daudy underline to us that although everything changes around us it is all interconnected; that there is no such thing as chaos. It is fascinating to compare the image of the smashing atoms at the Large Particle Collider at CERN with both the image of Halley’s Comet that Daudy took from the Bayeux Tapestry, with images of Hilma af Klint’s paintings that were led by spirits: areas thought to be irreconcilable but here coming significantly close visually. Daudy connects not just art and science but the spiritual through her work; connecting all elements of our existence together in apparently simple pieces of the deepest sophistication.
One of the main bodies of work is cherry blossom — the chaos of Spring. Her panels, with bright blue skies, and layered pink blossoms formed of felt, celebrate colour bursting through the winter desolation and signalling rebirth. Stravinsky beautifully and unexpectedly described Spring as that ‘violent spring’, referring to the way plants broke through and cracked the thick and seemingly impermeable Russian snow and this inspired his controversial ballet, ‘The Rite of Spring’. Daudy’s works are uplifting and joyous as the brilliant blue sky almost clashes with the intense hues of pink blossom. The different sizes and shapes of the panels fit together creating a sense of chaos, like the feeling of looking up at myriads of blossoms enveloping the trees and the wondrous sense of beauty they unfold.
Daudy’s inspiration for the cherry blossom was contemporary Japanese photography, and the sentiment imbued in the work of Katsumi Omori and Rinko Kawauchi. She was also inspired by Van Gogh’s painting Almond Blossom. Van Gogh’s work was painted in an Arles asylum shortly before his death and reflects his deep passion for Japan and Japanese Ukiyo-e woodblock prints. Van Gogh was overwhelmed by his love of Japan, and this work is an homage to it. He moved to Arles because he believed it resembled the Japanese countryside that he imagined through the prints. For Van Gogh, Arles becomes a sort of exile in his imagination. Van Gogh painted the almond blossom, in the spirit of Japanese culture, as it symbolises birth, and was intended to celebrate the birth of his nephew.
Daudy has also created a miniature installation piece of wheat fields inspired by Van Gogh’s drawings of the Auvers-sur-Oise countryside. Daudy has reimagined these haunting final images, layered and intersecting in a frenzy of the final flush of creativity. She has recast them as a Chinese Scholar’s Object, and the link with Asia seems a highly appropriate one, considering that Van Gogh’s writing about the painting of these works sound close to the sentiments expressed in classical Chinese poetry in which Daudy is so well versed. Van Gogh’s depression had enveloped him, and he was later to shoot himself out in such fields. He wrote of the painted version “Returning there, I set to work. The brush almost fell from my hands… I had no difficulty in expressing sadness and extreme solitude.”
Looking at the composition of Daudy’s cherry blossom, I recall classical Chinese poetry of the Song Dynasty, and in particular, Li Yu’s poem, ‘Immortal by the River’. In Chinese culture, the brilliant display of the blossom, represents the transience of life, a key focus of Daudy’s practice. The magnificent flowers bloom for such a short time and then they are gone. For Daudy, cycling through London’s deserted streets, she wondered ‘at the chaos of nature’ as she came across a blossoming tree which she described as ‘a miracle of pink of white’, which, in 2020 signalled the first few days of coronavirus. The beauty of nature versus its destructive forces coexisting. The idea of beauty acting as a metaphor for violence is also present in Li Yu’s poem. It is inspiring because it sounds like a traditional love poem expressing longing and this was probably his intention:
The last petals of cherry blossom fallen, Spring has gone.
Butterflies flap golden-powdered wings and fly off in pairs.
A cuckoo cries to the moon, west of a tiny pavilion,
Painted shades and pearl curtains,
In despair, [she] rolls up the gold-flecked blinds.
The gate and alley has been dreary and desolate since parting;
[She] gazes out at the hazy grass, until it vanishes in the distance.
However, it is a poem written in a state of conflict which conjures up the dichotomy between the domestic, longing for one’s comfort and home, and being forcibly removed from it. This is exactly the same feeling one gets from the doilies, crocheted by the Syrian refugees. Li Yu was the unsuccessful ruler of the Southern Tang Dynasty who is better known as a sophisticated literati writing poetry, prose and music. According to a later scholar of the 12th century, who saw the manuscript of this poem in Li Yu’s hand, the calligraphy was uncharacteristically untidy and rushed. The manuscript indicated that Li Yu’s poem about the fallen cherry blossom was written as an ode to JinLing, his town and the centre of his Dynasty, which, incredibly, were physically under attack while he wrote this poem. He writes the poem as if he was already in exile, through the image of the fallen cherry blossom. This was to be his fate as the poem looks back longingly to his home to which he would never return. The last two lines of this poem where not completed which augments the idea that his being attacked prevented him from completing the poem. The cherry blossom here represents the transience of life — a momento mori — none of which is lost on Daudy.
To me, this poem and Li Yu’s life of scholarly retreat, are close to the mindset of the artist. Her work is often about rootlessness and solitude but also of redemption both physical and metaphysical. The idea that art can give substance to life, bring to home its higher meaning. We have seen this spirit repeated in the book of miracles, from the tree of life, the orange, the meaning behind abstraction and the miracle of the Bath Oliver to the cherry blossom. Daudy’s practice is inspired by the literati tradition in China, where text was written on objects. It was an integral part of the life of civil servants and the educated classes, who were expected to be extremely cultured and engaged in the arts. Daudy studied Chinese at university and this background has been the root and inspiration of her multi media work as an artist. Daudy notes that in ancient China women could be extremely educated on occasion, as it was a sign of social status and grandeur to take the trouble to teach even women and servants the classics.
When you enter Daudy’s studio, what draws the attention after the work, books and incredible plants is the myriad of stones and pebbles. Every one tells a story. Their prodigious age helps her to relativise when she falls off cliffs of despair. The art of collecting stones of course relates back to a practice of the Chinese literati. The literati believed that the unusual shape of rocks contained different spirits and they were celebrated and collected for their diverse abstract shapes. The pebble forms one of the miracles in Daudy’s book and Pebble Press is the name of her new publishing imprint, which will use the book as an artistic medium.
In order to remind her self of the rollercoaster of 2020, she requested a small stone from a geologist friend, that she could keep with her as a tool for reminding her of two things ‘1. to have faith and 2. take responsibility for myself’. He showed her three, and she chose one that she was pleased to learn was called a Heaven’s Eye agate. It seemed appropriate. To her delight he gave her the stone as a gift. She had mounted into a ring. This small, but powerful stone sits on her hand; a watchful and protective eye, reminding her to pay attention.
Wonderchaos — https://shows.acast.com/wonderchaos
Bibliography:
Kurt Almquist and Louise Belgrage (Editors), Hilma af Klint Visionary, Stolkholm, 2020
Sun Chengjuan ‘The Hidden Blessing of Being a Last Ruler: Anecdotes of the Song Dynasty Interpretations of Li Yu’s (937–978), Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews, Vol.34, Dec, 2012, 113–4