The title of the book has borrowed its name Quarantania from the title of a Louise Bourgeois sculpture. While Bourgeois’ concerns regarding the duality between the isolated individual and the shared awareness of the group focused on her relationship with her family, the three artists involved have expressed this issue differently.

While acknowledging the condition, they each site the individual within a different group context as they explore their personal lives and their relationship with historical, natural and present-day social environments in psychological terms often conveyed in the poetry of the absurd.

Quarantania features the work of three emerging international artists, Neha Choksi (India), Eva Kotátková (Czech Republic) and Taus Makhacheva (Russia). True to the ethos of the exhibition, the curator, David Thorp, writes about each artist’s practice individually, and also in relation to the works of the other artists.

Published to accompany the exhibition Quarantania at John Hansard Gallery 24 April – 9 June 2012, and at Enclave 15 June – 15 July 2012.