Each of us is “an archaeological site”, asserted Lucy Sante in her 1998 memoir, The fact factory. “What passes for roots is really a matter of sediment, accretion, chance and juxtaposition.” This notion of self as strata came to mind while visiting Tanoa Sasraku’s ‘Liths’ exhibition, in which the Anglo-Ghanaian artist uses geological imagery to examine his personal connections to the UK landscape.
Five monumental free-standing showcases present what at first glance appear to be blocks of stone (all the works Lit, 2022). Two are arranged in a trench to cross; the rest dominate viewers like the Bronze Age monuments they are named after. Although exhibited on their own, the ‘Liths’ are better understood compared to a smaller series called ‘Terratypes’, 2022. The process carries meaning in Sasraku’s work. The “Terratypes” were made in and from the landscape. The artist searched for pigments in personally significant locations across the British Isles and rubbed them onto stacks of blank newspaper that she had assembled, sewn together and embossed with grid-like patterns. She then soaked the paper in bays, bogs or rivers or made strategic lacerations in the finished surface. Each Lit arises from the torn remnants of this process. Sasraku digitally scanned and enlarged selected fragments, then printed them on Japanese paper, so that the final images took on the dimensions and visual texture of a stone slab.
Compared to the “Terratypes”, the “Liths” are colder, more restrained. Sasraku regards them as portraits. If the “Terratypes” excavate, revealing the type of sedimentation Sante alluded to, the “Liths” are all superficial, scanned, skin-deep fragments that replace a layered whole.
