In Panopticon: The Unsettled Body, Nurbol Nurakhmet explores the poetics of inhabiting a body as a site for subjectivity, discipline and memory. Working in large-scale painting, drawing and collage, Nurakhmet depicts the ways in which the human experience engages in an ever-changing dialogue with the spaces we inhabit.
In the eighteenth-century, English philosopher and social theorist Jeremy Bentham introduced the concept of the panopticon, a prison in which a central watch tower is surrounded by a circle of cells. While the inmates cannot see into the tower, the guards are granted unlimited surveillance of each cell. This imbalance of access creates uncertainty for the inmates, as they must anticipate being observed at all times. The panopticon was never actualised but symbolised an ideology of discipline manifested through the threat of constant surveillance which Bentham believed had the ability to dramatically alter and regulate society. It is this understanding of the profound impact of our environments on our human experience which has shaped Nurakhmet’s recent works.
The artist’s gestural handling of oil paints constructs scenes of suspension. While encountering each work in the exhibition, the viewer experiences bodies that feel restless, unresolved and unsettled. Stark lighting and thoughtfully positioned figures produce compositions akin to a theatrical mise-en-scene that is shrouded in doubt and fascination. Exact locations are difficult to place, as the gestural brushstrokes mar as much as they build their representational contents. In Panopticon: The Unsettled Body, Nurakhmet creates a series of spaces that combine reality with sites of memory, nostalgia and subjectivity, expanding the definition of space beyond its physical and architectural understanding.