Anne Graaff is a South African/British artist, art historian and poet, based in Paris.

She has been collaborating with the Sikora Culpo Duo in the creation their artwork for the 3 albums:

1. “The Spectral Life of Things”
2. The Paris Sessions Vol. 1 “Mimesis”
3. The Paris Sessions Vol.2 “Speaking in tongues”

In September 2020, after the released of the latest album of the duo, we had the opportunity to engage into a casual and beautiful conversation with the artist Anne Graaff, she talks to us about her work with the Duo but, also about her passion for music and her with Synesthesia. To create a lovely circular story of sound into visuals and visuals into sound

Thanks to Anne Graaff, Catherine Sikora and Christopher Culpo.

Visit Anne’s website: www.annegraaff.com

ON SYNESTHESIA

Synesthesia, is the translation of one sense into another sense. When this refers  to music, it is when sound is translated into visuals or visuals translated into sound. 

Kandinsky is an example of an artist who worked like that, because music was one of his inspirations.

I absolutely love sitting and listening to sound. Sometimes it’s sounds in nature but sometimes it is musical sounds, in real time, trying to make translations, translating what I hear through my ears into something visual. 

For me it is sort of, I suppose, like a meditation, a really profound meditation, because one is so much in the moment. And one is attempting to capture qualities about the music, in rapid motion.  

So then one is attempting to capture, how can I say, the whole tone and feel of the piece and then also through color and line.

Then one is continuously aware of the sounds, of heavy or light, if they seem to be breezy or earthed, if they seem to have curly and curved shapes, or scattering shapes, or  a linear shape.

And the lines are always moving. 

It’s very rapid, the work that I do in this way. It seems to me that it’s a lovely fresh and open way to work. 

– Anne Graaff

ABOUT ANNE GRAAFF 

Anne Graaff is a South African/British artist, art historian and poet. She lives in France, close to Fontainebleau.

In her artwork, she is a painter and maker of artist’s books. (Her Fine Art MA thesis, on contemporary book art, informs her practice). An art historian, specializing in Outsider Art, she has written two books, published by Penguin, South Africa, (under the name Anne Emslie).

In 2017 she republished The Owl House, a book about the South African Outsider artist, Helen Martins.

Her poetry is published in various publications, including Carapace, Stanzas, and the anthologies of African poetry, Africa, My Africa! And Absolute Africa! (Sun Publishers).

Recent exhibitions of her artist’s’ books and paintings include the Paris exhibition, curated by Caroline Corre, Elles métamorphosent le Livre II at the gallery, Espace des Femmes, a solo exhibition of artists books, The Fan Books, at Atelier de la Main d’Or, Paris, and work in the group shows, Be:e, at la Porte Peintre, France,  My Mother’s Garden, Parts and Labor Gallery Johannesburg, the exhibitions Domestic Departures and Mixed Metaphors at the Kalk Bay Modern, Cape Town and Art/Out of the Ordinary at the AVA Gallery, Cape Town.