A GIANT mural set to be unveiled in a Scottish city is intended to “give strength” to people, according to its creators.
Scaffolding will soon be removed at Dundee’s Tay Street Lane where Fife fine artist Kirsty Whiten has been working with Annie Nicholson, a London-based print artist known for her vibrant public artworks as the Fandangoe Kid.
The huge painting features a five-metre tall, goddess-like figure symbolising the process of recovery from trauma.
“I hope she’ll be this reassuring presence,” says Whiten, who first met Nicholson during an art residency in New York last year. “I liked the idea of her being so huge, that if you were near her physically, her impact would give you strength.”
The gable-end mural is the biggest project to be commissioned by local street art project Open/Close and the largest undertaken by Whiten following her smaller public works in Edinburgh.
When Open/Close organiser Russell Pepper asked Whiten if she’d consider taking on the vast project, she told him of work she’d been developing with Nicholson.
“I’ve loved Kirsty’s work for a while and Annie does murals, big colourful texts,” says Russell, who has overseen the creation of street art trails in Dundee centre and the city’s Stobswell.
“I was confident it would be great. If you’re confident in an artist enough to commission them, you’re best leaving them to it – that’s how you get their best work.”
While Whiten’s striking fine art figures and Nicholson’s dayglo text works look different, the pair soon bonded in Brooklyn over their interest in the use of ritual for healing and marking life changes.
“That first time we talked about how we were both going through difficult times with mental health and emotional upheavals,” says Whiten. “We had both came across this idea of using ritual actions and ceremonies in your own space to help you process them.”
“While our work ends up looking very different the content is actually really deeply linked. We both approach taboo subjects with sensitivity and humour. We both use bright colours and bold moves in our work. We are both currently interested in how you process loss and trauma. This mural, while physically and emotionally challenging, has been an exploration of how our practices overlap.”
The pair met when Nicholson was completing a 180-foot mural in Williamsburg. The joyous pink, blue and yellow work reads “Make your legacy golden”, a tribute to the multiple family members Nicholson lost in an accident some years ago.
“This collaboration has been really powerful,” says Nicholson. “I’m narrative-driven; I like to tell stories, big scale, in the public realm, while Kirsty is a fine artist. The combination wasn’t immediately obvious but there’s so many crossovers in terms of who we are as people and how we operate from places of integrity.
In Into Your Light, her recent film collaboration with Tara Darby, the Fandangoe Kid explores how she used dancing to help release trauma and grief.
Using the body was also central to the pair’s subsequent development work in Hackney where Whiten painted Nicholson’s skin with personal statements relating to her experiences. The “ritual” was documented for Brooklyn Art Library’s Sketchbook Project.
“The story that’s on the body is my story of trauma release, it’s extremely personal,” says Nicholson. “We realised we had some very powerful images that could be impactful in the public realm, particularly for women who are unlocking trauma of all kinds, something that’s really close to my heart.”
The five-metre tall figure at the mural’s centre is less a portrait of Nicholson and more “an embodiment of power” says Whiten.
Visible on the figure are the phrases “power in vulnerability”, “speak your truth” and “own your depths”. “She has these two staffs in her hands and this gesture that’s very strong and balanced and connected to something rooted,” says Whiten. “But she’s there’s this vulnerability too.”
Much of Whiten’s work in recent years has explored the use of rituals.
“I’m very interested in the transformative effect they have,” she says. “As you go through life there’s all these reorganisations of yourself, your identity. Annie and I are both really interested in marking how trauma release comes in waves and of being conscious of these markers of healing.”
WHILE grafting from dawn to dusk over several days at the site, locals looked out for the pair, offering cups of tea and a place to use the loo.
Often on the women’s minds was the UNESCO City of Design’s status as Europe’s “drug death capital”.
As shown on Darren McGavery’s recent BBC Scotland documentary, 72 local people lost their lives to drugs in 2018, the year of the opening of V&A Dundee.
Of the survivors and bereaved people who spoke on the programme, many, including McGavery himself, talked of how a traumatic event triggered what became an addiction.
“That came up several times,” says Whiten, “of how Dundee struggles with mental health problems and addiction while also being a city that’s so alive. I’ve long wanted to do a mural here. I have quite a lot to do with Dundee and I think there’s an amazing atmosphere in the city of growing and potential.”
She adds: “There’s all sorts of trauma and grief for people across the board but I’m really hoping that it will have meaning in the city for that reason, that it’s part of a process of healing, that it will be meaningful for people here.”
Being in a public place means the mural can be enjoyed anyone, no matter their means.
Though reliant on volunteers and community groups, Open/Close Dundee have ambitious plans to build on their art trails.
“We want to develop a series of murals across the city linking cultural attractions to communities,” says Pepper.
“I can see at least two or three local artists who’ve done doors for us before now being ready to do bigger murals. As well as giving opportunities to local artists, attracting people to the area to explore, the pieces are not in a gallery or anywhere that people might feel excluded from.
“And people appreciate it. They tell us they do. Whenever we ask people what they’d like to see in their area they say: ‘Just make it colourful and bright’.”
See the work made by the Fandangoe Kid and Kirsty Whiten for The Sketchbook Project which inspired the mural at www.sketchbookproject.com/library/22183.
www.openclosedundee.co.uk www.fandangoekid.com www.kirstywhiten.com
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