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Charlotte Eta Mumm – Sought by Shadows

The multi-layered paper works “Sought by Shadows” by Charlotte Eta Mumm were created during her 2024 artist in residence at the “Thread” in Sinthian, Senegal, which was organized by the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation. The artist tells us about her works, which are currently on display at Galerie Tanit.

“I brought high-quality paper, lightfast paint and a pyrography pen with me, not knowing what for. Just in case and to be able to start without being dependent on others. The paper felt like a low-threshold entry and then became quite a driving force.

The first step

To start with, I brought some of the beautiful and typical red earth into my studio, mixed it with glue and applied the earthy pigment to paper. Just as another color, I found it too obvious and also too clichéd. So I cut the papers into pieces that ended up in cutouts. For each piece of paper, I decided to repeat the same abstracted shape, referring to, for example, termite mounds, laterite rocks, branches, trees, huts and puddles. Each shape represented an impression and an echo of thoughts and feelings. I mounted these cutouts one after the other on another sheet of paper. Then, in long meditative hours and in countless layers, I applied a network of different lines that referred to the content and the condensed idea of ​​the excerpt.

The lines

The lines as an irregular but regular rhythm of form, colors and layers carry the condensed content material within themselves through abstraction. This painted, intangible network of repetition and colors is a reflection of the flickering and shimmering impressions in nature or when looking at the stars. You see a whole – a tree, a field, a termite mound, a night sky, but it is not possible to focus on a single element such as a single leaf, a blade of grass, a grain of sand, a star. Instead, it becomes blurred, you get lost, the image disappears. However, when you look into the camera, all these layers open up and you fall into a three-dimensional space.

Line by line

I tried to put these brooding thoughts and impressions onto paper, I subjected myself to this process for hours, line by line, mixing and diluting the paint. This went so far that the paper background with the cutouts on it, the different shades of color and all the hand-painted lines in its entirety became a shimmering, diffuse effect. In total I created 11 of these interwoven and layered paintings.

The exhibition “Sought by Shadows” by Charlotte Eta Mumm – on view at Galerie Tanit until March 6th.

The final step

As a final step/layer, I chose one of these images, gathered my thoughts on it and made a drawing to interpret the process and form of that particular sheet. The drawings almost became a little cosmological in the sense that they form a cosmos of their own for that painterly environment.

The heat and the crack

These drawings were made with a wood burning tool that you can use like a pen to draw. I didn’t use it on wood, but on very thin white paper. Sometimes it felt contradictory to do this in the almost unbearable heat, but I really liked the flow and irregularity of the line through stronger or lighter burns. There is something archaic, fragile and intense about the look at the same time. In turn, I carefully glued these papers to the corresponding painting. Not in the middle, but where I intuitively felt it was right. It’s almost like a window, a crack in the net through which you see another world unfolding, or an enlargement of the microscopic scale of the painted pattern.”