A Conceptual Artist Programming for Social Change

Abstract

Rachel Ara describes herself as a conceptual and data artist , whose work brings to light the trials and tribulations of women in a male dominated world. Through her art, she summons disparate elements from past to present, physical and digital, recalling histories of feminism and memories of women in an alien world. We see red neon lights and red-light districts, Florentine nuns in the shuttered silence of cloisters weaving cloth in codes. We are experiencing the artworks of Rachel Ara that conjure vivid feminist images and convey powerful messages about women’s states of being and consciousness, and consider issues of gender and sexuality, a theme that runs through her work. By comparison, the 2017 exhibition at the Tate Britain , Queer British Art, 1861–1967, put on view mostly familiar works of women by male artists, and reframed them as works by queer artists living at a time when that identity seemed camouflaged. As gender and sexual identity have come to the fore, queer art and artists take more visible forms of gender expression. In this new and emerging approach, Ara takes a lead position for conveying, and putting before us, a female perspective where the artist and her art are one. Using the sophisticated means of production that she has mastered, from computing, technology, systems and data analytics, all part of her palette of artistic expression, her art takes its place at the intersection of the digital and physical worlds. She is not married to one mode of making art, as she considers what is possible and what is practical, but in either case, it is her passion for art as an expression of ideas that provoke the viewer to think critically about issues of contemporary life. You might say that Ara is a “postdigital” artist who delves deeply into these issues, and speaks with an authentic voice uniquely hers, and this is reflected in her aesthetic sense of hands-on highly skilled methods of working that meld computing and programming , woodworking and technology, for making art and making a difference.