It all began in 2005 when she found 80 Euros in the street. This strand of luck gave Nadia the opportunity to get acrylics, paintbrushes and paper; the largest sheets she could get her hands on. Then, maybe because nothing predestined her for painting, she left all of this aside, until a Pollock-style impulse brought her back to it a while later.The pleasure she gets from painting is quasi-orgasmic.

 

Chance, spontaneity, unconscious are what characterize Nadia Aghaï’s works. From movement to movement, from rhythm to rhythm, her hand guides her, in an instinctive momentum, as if she was driven.   The repetition of these movements seems choreographed; her brushstroke is to be fluid while pulled by gravity; this leads her, through various rhythms, from her current picture to new possibilities.

 

This carnal relation with painting confers to her works something tactile, her paintings, in relief, might make you want to touch them. Nadia Aghaï lets the paint run down the canvas to reveal its lifelines, its scars, its questionings…

Some of her pictures are networks, labyrinths, connections, conflicting colors, a permanent aggression. Then everything becomes fluid, increasingly lighter. It all gets back on tracks without clashes. And she leaves her mistakes behind without notice, to pick them up again on impulse, creating new paths, horizontal, vertical and at times, harder to predict.

 

Her impulses can lead her to become a serial painter, for hours on end. Two, three, four at a time… numbers which contribute a fair share of symbolism, mysticism. Their symbolism creates a bridge between the earthly and the spiritual.

 

And, as an offering to luck or fate, Nadia Aghaï is loyal to the number 80, which started it all.

 

                                                                                  (written by Céline Thiery)