Page 8 - Art First: Partou Zia: Portraits Beyond Self

sense of self. But this is not exactly what she explores in this series
of subtly brilliant works. It is what informs them, but with her unique
talent, she never stops with questions as they are usually posed.
She reformulates them, enabling genuine discovery.

e result is works that image an expanded awareness of what we take
for granted in portraits, in landscape and in relation to the conscious-
ness that inhabits them. It presents us with the issue of whether any
of her paintings are self-portraits in the accepted sense at all. A mythic
figure by an inverted tree with strange flowers breathes into the clouds;
a head grows out of the landscape; a St. Joan figure plants a red flag defi-
antly, high above a valley. ese paintings conform perhaps the least to
our idea of self-portraiture, yet they evoke Partou herself just as clearly
as the drawings that come closest to what we might expect of the genre.

e two nude portraits in this exhibition are entitled Self Portrait (2001)
and Self Portrait (2002)−cat. nos. 4 and 5−though they are, of course,
of the artist, and could have been so called, especially as they show her
at work. ere is a sense of being caught in the moment, like Rubens’
famous portrait of his wife, Hélène (1630s, known as e Fur). is
means they do not primarily convey a sense of a reflection in the mirror,
or of some ordinary scrutiny of the face and figure, but rather a manifes-
tation in paint of the relation between artist and viewer.

cat no. 3 Flowering Rod, 2006, oil on canvas, 153 x 183 cm