Ricki Morse – Vian Sora: Her Presence Through Mythology, History, Conflict and Beauty

Vian Sora
Iraqi, 1976- (active USA)

Dilmun, 2022
oil and mixed media on canvas
80 × 60 in.

SBMA, Museum purchase with funds provided by the General Art Acquisition Fund
2023.42



Vian Sora in her Louisville, Kentucky studio in 2023 (photo by Mindy Best)

“By relinquishing control of the paint itself and allowing it to work on the canvas, my work attains a measure of hope: if nothing is settled and determined, any outcome is still possible, thus I utilize vibrant contrasting colors set often on burnt or earth tones.”
- Vian Sora

COMMENTS

The Santa Barbara Museum of Art is pleased to announce the acquisition of Vian Sora’s painting “Dilmun” (2022).

Vian Sora was born in Baghdad, obtained a degree in computer science, and left Iraq after living through the first Gulf War, years of sanctions, and the American invasion in 2003. After spending time in the United Arab Emirates and Turkey, she settled in Louisville, Kentucky. In recent years, she has painted abstractions that are at once joyous with vibrant colors and luscious passings of poured paint, but also fraught and conflicted. There are nearly always areas that look like a person, wings, a tree, and leaves, or something recognizable that wants to emerge from the elegant chaos of her drips and flows of paint, yet we cannot be sure exactly what these areas might be. In “Dilmun,” a body seems to float in water in the foreground, while a green expanse reminiscent of a desert oasis rises up in the center.

Dilmun is the ancient Sumerian name for a kingdom that existed along the shores of the Persian Gulf from about 4000 BCE to 800 BCE. It was a trade hub between cities in ancient Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley civilization in present day Pakistan.

Vian Sora is represented by Luis De Jesus Los Angeles, and is currently presenting her first New York solo exhibition “Vian Sora: End of Hostilities,” at David Nolan Gallery.

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