Much of Lou’s art, of course, is about taking something horrific and making it transcendent. “I’m interested in rescuing things in some way,” she says. She is just finishing another massive fenced enclosure, this one in the shape of a cross, to be exhibited at Lever House in New York this fall. The prayer carpet pieces, meanwhile, are based on ancient patterns that represent the pursuit of paradise. The technique she’s using is absurdly labor-intensive, even by Lou’s standards. After drawing the patterns, Lou paints them onto aluminum panels, some up to 10 feet long, so that she and her assistants can cover them with miniscule upright cylinders—bugle beads of varying lengths and colors, custom made in Japan. It’s a bit like turning millions of pins on their heads, one by one, so that viewers can see only the tips. Looking around the room at the unfinished patterns and jars of beads, Lou says, “No one in their right mind would do this.” Later, she adds, “I’m kind of an impossibility freak. I bet the farm every time.”
In July, when I reach Lou by phone, she says that she’s just seen the cross-shaped fence assembled for the first time and that she’s thrilled. The next day she sends me an e-mail that reads, in part: “I’ve made work to take my revenge against injustice, both personal and political. But now, standing back, I wonder if art can become an act of forgiveness. The object stands gleaming, arms open wide, big enough to love anyone, forgive anything.”
In Durban, Lou had stressed that no matter how the pieces turn out, her work is about the process as much as the results. “It’s not like we get to the gallery opening and that’s the moment,” she’d said. “This, now, is the moment. And if I didn’t believe that, I couldn’t do this kind of work. Because I would truly go mad.”
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