'The world which I started this body of work seems like a hundred years ago now. Not gonna lie, like many, I have found it very challenging working, creating & responding through the global turmoil.' - Aida Wilde (2020)
Presenting her signature text-based works, Aida Wilde’s installation features various slogans and iconograph and ‘pop’ themed artworks. In preparations for her Artist-in-Residence programme within the Victorian townhouse of Schoeni Projects London, she spent over three months, while London was in lock down, preparing and creating site-specific works in her print studio before the residency programme in what has been dubbed the Granny Ally and Nanny Loo.
Preferring to work with odd spaces, her installation is multifaceted and consists of various zones. Running along and up the staircase walls, From Rumi Verses to Wilde Collection serigraph prints are overlaid with screen printed texts of short extracts from the 13th century Persian poet, scholar and mystic Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī'. Stay Alert Collection serigraph prints series is inspired by pandemic controversies. Call to Action serigraphs on white and black lace banners are based upon observations, conversations and memories that took place during the UK lockdown and the Black Lives Matters Movement respectively. Changed Priorities road sign is an artwork that not just took up residency in the exhibition space but also on the streets of Hackney.
Reimagining one of the house’s toilets as the nanny loo Pandemik Mausoleum, Wilde designed the wallpaper with the universal language of Emojis, it tells her story of the pandemic, imitating the Damascus wallpaper design found throughout the house. Surrounded by everyday objects which have become totemic of the contemporary climate – discarded objects from lock-down spring cleaning and bottles of bleach sourced locally from the independent manufacturer Zamo – her works are presented alongside hazard tape, demarcating ‘socially distanced’ two-metre intervals. Accompanying the Nanny Loo is a set of political movement inspired "merchandise" in her UV CleanZing Zone. In an adjoining storeroom is the Pandemik Panik Room. It comprises of toilet roll tubes donated by neighbours and posters from her neighbourhood community outreach print-making workshop, held prior to her residency at the house.
Click here to watch Aida Wilde preparing her disCONNECT installation.
Click here to watch our Artist Interview Series on Instagram IGTV with Aida Wilde and Curator Nicole Schoeni.
