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Vanda Sim Sim: City Words

posted by Robyn Pitts July 21, 2020

Portuguese printmaker and artist Vanda Sim Sim’s latest collection is entitled City Words. Printed between 2019 and 2020, the artworks represent her signature visual and conceptual language, juxtaposing bright colour, bold shapes, and abstraction.

Vanda’s hand-pulled screen prints are created in very limited editions and are frequently unique proofs. Her prints mix visual experiments that she begun more than 10 years ago, with new elements that are supported by lots of visual research. This research entails analysing the internet, newspapers, and typographical elements, which she utilises in her works to reflect her interest in the contemporary languages that surround us. “Advertisements, outdoors, graffiti’s, urban landscapes, old and new architecture, the perception of the world in constant change, social relations, everything influence the final result” describes the printmaker.

With five to ten images prepared on screens, Vanda plays with the combination of different layers, colours, and scales, working on a dialogue between abstraction and figuration, small details and large saturated places. Each print in the City Words series became a different and unique combination of this process, exploring the technical possibilities of screen printing. The prints reflect the multiple realities and dimensions of a city, exploring a sense of scale through the juxtaposition of details and large landscapes. Vanda represents this through imaginative constructions or maps that do not lead to a particular place or purpose, leaving one to question where we really are, and where we actually might be going. Incorporating collected objects from surrounding places, of which Vanda explored their wear and tear marks, the series explores this combination of collected images, as well as the addition and subtraction of printmaking processes.