The Unbreakable Rope

Rachel Maggart,
b. 1985, USA
Rachel Maggart grew up in Knoxville,
Tennessee. She trained for twenty years as
a classical pianist and received a degree in
Music from New York University, before working
as an art writer for a variety of print and
digital publications. Rachel expanded into
working as a consultant in public relations
and development for non-profit organisations
committed to experimental and emerging art
forms. She went on to pursue a Masters in Art
History at Hunter College in New York but
midway through relocated to London to finish
her degree at Birkbeck College, where she
received a scholarship awarded to only two
non-EU scholars at the School of Arts.
Soon after arriving in London, Rachel began
working as a dealer of modern art for a
Mayfair gallery, which inspired her to cultivate
her own longstanding fascination with artistic
practice. She opened her first solo exhibition
of ten paintings in Borough Market’s Roast
Restaurant in 2015. As primitive digital collages
transposed to canvas, the works use
British pop and art historical iconography as a
point of departure for examining contemporary
modes of perception and pre-packaged visual
narratives.
Rachel has become increasingly attuned to
issues of policing and scrutiny in the name of
Islam, since marrying ex-Islamist and political
prisoner turned advocate for liberal values and
Islamic reform, Maajid Nawaz. Critics of her
husband have stalked and maligned her family
on public fora, and in April 2015, prior to
Maajid’s Liberal Democrat Parliamentary campaign,
circulated a Daily Mail article strategically
publishing CCTV footage of his visit to a
London strip club. Video footage was leaked
to the newspaper via the club’s Muslim owner,
who scorned Maajid for his indulgent behaviour
during Ramadan. The coverage and its
propagation in outlets such as the ‘Middle
East Eye’ incited death threats to Maajid and
necessitated installing panic alarms around
their flat and in Rachel’s studio.
Double Exposure is the artist’s response to
this exploitative and mortifying experience.
Revisiting her method of appropriating and
manipulating loaded imagery to expose
underlying motives and hidden value systems,
Rachel has recycled pieces of text and stereotyped
representations of both the sacred and
the profane to shine a light on the manufacture
and dissemination of moralising viewpoints.
Paying tribute to the fallen Charlie Hebdo
Editor in Chief, Charb’s reflection on God
as a super-surveillance camera, the painting
mocks voyeurism masquerading as religious
observance. Images of sensual Quranic fantasies
and Western debauchery converge in a
decapitated body, to complicate conventional
notions of beauty and objects of desire. Equal
parts naïf and baroque, the painting interrogates
looking for the sake of looking. It forces
the viewer to consider context before subject
matter and glossy facades obscuring deeper
interpretations of events.
‘Verily, as for those who like [to hear] foul slander
spread against [any of] those who have
attained to faith grievous suffering awaits them
in this world and in the life to come: for God
knows [the full truth], whereas you know [it]
not.’ – 24:19, Muhammad Asad translation
Double Exposure
Oil on canvas
70 x 100 cm
2016