Corinthe Rizvi was born in the UK, grew up in Hong Kong and Canada and has traveled extensively.
Her practice includes making & exhibiting and the social practice of collaborative multidisciplinary arts.
She lives and works on the Isle of Lewis, Scotland.
Exhibitions:
December 23 – An Artist Shoots themselves in the Foot, Turner House Gallery, Penarth
April 23 –Dec 23 – At Cross Purposes: Touring Exhibition and Publication:
School of Art Museum, Aberystwyth University / February – April 2023
Oriel Môn, Llangefni, Anglesey / April – June 2023
Queen Street Studios Gallery, Belfast, / September 2023
Elysium Gallery Swansea / November– December 2023
January 2019 – 56 Grwp Show, Oriel Henry Thomas, Carmarthen
November – December 2018 – 56 Grwp Show, Hearth Gallery, Penarth
July – August 2018 – 56 Grwp Show, Oxmarket Gallery, Chichester
August – September 2017 – 56 Grwp Show, Set House, St Brides
April 2017 – 56 Grwp Show, King Street Gallery, Carmarthen
November 2016 – 56 Grwp Show, National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth
April – September 2016 – 56 Grwp Show, Red House and Cyfarfa Castle, Merthyr Tydfil
November 2015 – Solo Exhibition- Kick-plate Gallery, Abertillary
July – September 2015 – 56 Group Show- Mid Wales Arts Centre
2000 – 2 Person Exhibition – Bruce Castle Museum, London,
1999 – Group Exhibition – Highgate Galleries, London
1999 – Group Exhibition – The Place Gallery, London
1995 – Solo Exhibition – Changing Room Gallery, London
Education:
Goldsmiths College. 2004 – 2005
Central St Martins School of Art and Design. 1999 – 2001
Byam Shaw School of Art. 1995 -1996
Middlesex University. 1984 – 1987
In 2022/23 I took part in the At Cross Purposes publication and touring exhibition; “a three-way conversation between two artists and a curator.” (Frances Woodley) It challenged me to articulate what drives me to make work in a way which I had previously been avoiding.
I am a multi-disciplinary artist, trained in the London art schools St. Martins and Goldsmiths. I am also a practicing Tibetan Buddhist and have studied Tibetan Buddhism in some depth. Previously when writing about my work, I have made only coded and veiled references to this. While at art school I encountered an uneasiness about Buddhism, which at the time was equated with New Age spiritual practices. I saw this as a misunderstanding and disparagement, and it rather put me off talking about my Buddhist practice in relationship to my work. This was unfortunate because it is primary.
In my work I am trying to find a language, using any and every media, for the expression of ideas, and especially experiences that I have encountered through my Buddhist practice… I am interested in awareness as an experience, in different states of consciousness, and in images as processed ‘in the mind’s eye’. I search for an equivalent to all this through the process of making work.
Experiences arise that are emotional, psychological, traumatic, habitual and repetitive, subtle, from memory, dream-like, sensory, deeply embodied: the natural range of experiences, all taking place within awareness.
When meditating, if the mind settles, experiences of awareness might arise that are not conceptual. A meditation teacher once used the phrase, when describing how to relate to experiences like this; ‘don’t touch it with your mind’.
When I’m making work, the process itself seems to benefit from this approach.
In meditation there are shiné and lhaktong practices. Shiné meditation is focused on quieting the mind in open awareness in not getting lost following your thoughts and impulses. Lhaktong meditation is aimed at insight, seeing things clearly, as they are.
In the concluding paragraph of the At Cross Purposes conversation I said:
“Classic Tibetan Buddhist art has nothing directly to do with the way I make work … There’s a range within my meditation between those practices that use form and symbolism, and others that are absolutely formless. I’ve just now understood how this range is reflected in my work.”
However recently I’ve come to understand that I got the first part of that statement completely wrong. Currently I am drawing directly from classical Tibetan art in the use of geometry, mandalas and figures, while not following the classically taught geometries that in Tibetan art require years of study to learn, and are very specific. Tibetan art, and therefore philosophy or ‘view’, directly relates to the meditation practices referred to above, moving a viewer from complexity through to simplicity (see image above describing the 4 Kayas).
In my own work I am drawing on pure experience as well as the ‘view’ described above; the “seeing clearly things as they are” aspect of experience.