Before the Sky Had a Name

Eight diptychs, sixteen canvases. A preview of a project in progress.

‘When in the height heaven was not named,
And the earth beneath did not yet bear a name.’

Enūma Eliš, the Babylonian epic of creation, Tablet I, translated by L.W. King (1902)

Project

K. Lious paints pairs of archetypes in dynamic equilibrium, reinterpreting the ancient iconographies that still underlie contemporary thought.

Before the Sky Had a Name is conceived as eight painted diptychs, sixteen works in all. On each canvas a grotesque creature drawn in red line mirrors the creature on its pair, and garlands and decorative or symbolic elements join the two. Every diptych has its own axis of symmetry, set by the concept of the pair, and the two canvases answer one another without coinciding.

Opposition and axis are one and the same. Each pair is a different kind of duality, and its imagery draws on the archetypes Jung described. The choice of dualities, and of symbols from many epochs and countries, is her own, and the series works through them as a personal enquiry. The paintings set out no thesis to prove; they are images that awaken a memory already present. Four works are complete to date, forming two diptychs, Luna and Sole, and Dioniso and Apollo.

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The title of the project draws on the opening lines of the Enūma Eliš, the Babylonian poem of the creation of the world.

Preview

The series has not yet been exhibited, and K. Lious shows a single canvas here. Galleries and curators can request images of the completed works and the full project dossier from studio@karolinaliusikova.com.

Installation

Two rooms, eight walls

One diptych to each wall. At the centre of each room a sculpture acts as the pivot for the four diptychs around it.

Canvases · 16 · acrylic on canvas · 100 × 120 cm

Wall · about 250 cm of wall per diptych

Floor · 1 sculpture per room

The Luna and Sole diptych was first etched on a single plate in 2022, Grotesques 365 — solstice, now in Editions.