*SECOND* 2018. LINA IRIS VIKTOR. PURE 24-KARAT GOLD, ACRYLIC, GOUACHE, INK, PRINT ON COTTON RAG PAPER. 52 X 40 IN.

At New Orleans Museum of Art, Lina Iris Viktor Explores Blackness As A Source Of Energy and Creation

Spectacular paintings by artist Lina Iris Viktor are on view at the New Orleans Museum of Art until Jan. 6, 2019. Introduced to her work via Harper’s Bazaar Arabia, further investigation about Viktor brought me to Wondereur.com, an outstanding website curating artists by other credentialed creatives.

New York based Viktor is profiled by Sir David Adjaye, a leading figure in the architecture world, and lead designer of the new Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC. In 2017, TIME magazine named Adjaye as the world’s most influential architect. He was also knighted by the British government in 2017, an opportunity for Adjaye to reiterate the responsibility and potential of architects “to effect positive social change.”

Thelma Golden, the director and chief curator of the Adjaye-designed Studio Museum in Harlem wrote in TIME: “His work – deeply rooted in both the present moment and the complex context of history – has envisioned new ways for culture to be represented and reflected in the built environment. Nowhere is this more evident than in his recent triumph on the National Mall.

"How can a design acknowledge, and embody, the weight of this monumental history and yet transcend it right before your eyes? How can a building be true to the earthbound burdens of centuries of oppression and struggle, while at the same time displaying the faith, joy and triumphs of African-American life, so that the structure soars into the light?

“In his epoch-making design, David made us aware of those questions and brilliantly solved them, with a singular gesture.”

In his curator’s statement for Wondereur.com about Lina Iris Viktor, Sir David Adjaye describes her work:

“Lina’s work is as evocative as it is strikingly beautiful. Her explorations with gold possess incredible intelligence, drawing out at once powerful connections to global indigenous heritages, opulent futuristic visions of black beauty, and vast philosophical notions of cosmology, geometry, and atomic matter. Her work crosses confidently across a landscape of science, technology, culture and identity with a timeless elegance and a casual defiance that is definitively modern.”