In all of N. Dash's works, there is an emphasis on the importance of touch and the body's inherent corporeal intellect. Before language, there is touch. Touch is the implicit and intuitive compass for how we navigate a world where the sensual is inseparable from the perceptual and conceptual. This understanding remains largely unspoken, symbol of a language of an entirely different nature, passed down through our genes, our culture and our technologies.
N. Dash writes about Untitled: Earth is excavated from the New Mexico high desert and shipped to the studio in New York where it is rendered into a mud/pigment plaster. The paintings are constructed of multiple components and deposits of natural pigments.
Some of the lines are graphite, they catch the light nicely when the body moves around it. The lines are made of strings that are embedded within the dried mud. The top string has been partially removed, to reveal an index of where the line was laid and then brought up - so the tool that was used to make the index is still there.
