Out of the archive: Zoe Zenghelis at the AA

Do you remember how perfect everything was? This cryptic question – the title of the Zoe Zenghelis exhibition at the AA – is at once a provocation and a tease, and invites us to speculate; when? Is it a reference to pre-pandemic life? To a golden era in architecture? Or in the spaces that Zenghelis’s enigmatic paintings conjure up? Perhaps in her Aegean-tinged memory?  This question, which could be a reference to many things, is in fact highly personal: a reference to a postcard from Rem Koolhaas and Madelon Vriesendorp to Zoe, sent from New York at the height of their creative partnership.

This exhibition – the first retrospective of London-based Athenian artist Zoe Zenghelis – features some 70 paintings, from her early work at OMA to later work after the break with husband Elia Zenghelis and OMA. It is the result of a six-year project by curator Hamed Khosravi. Do You Remember How Perfect Everything Was? reintroduces Zoe Zenghelis to the space of the AA school, a space in which, in the view of Khosravi, she belongs.  It takes dust off her work, credits, and reveals her role in it. Finding this work was a conscious act of uncovering on the part of Khosravi; for most of her career Zenghelis’s work had been hidden behind the credits of the those she worked with. This cultural amnesia about the work of women is an inherited problem but one Khosravi is sure is still going on, saying ‘I wish the process of unearthing such hidden work were more institutionally and systemically supported.’

The consequence of this forgetting for Zoe Zenghelis is that, though a founding member of OMA who worked on some of its most recognisable early drawings, she is relatively unrecognised. Her work as a painter within the field of architecture has been hugely influential. It was, and still is, embedded into the pedagogy of the AA, following the Colour Workshop she and Vriesendorp were invited to teach by Alvin Boyarsky in 1982.

Her work formed part of the aesthetic of the early OMA studio and was a clear influence on Zaha Hadid, with whom she also shared a pedagogical collaboration at the AA. Arguably her influence today is also apparent in the current post-digital aesthetic, which, rejecting the hyperreality, perfection and production modes of 3D renders, evokes a hazier, less perfect era.

Like the modernists, Zenghelis is concerned with rethinking representation and exploring geometry, colour, abstraction and depth as she examines the metropolitan tectonic and scenes from her memory of her native Greece. She was introduced to the world of architecture through her husband Elia and the two went on to work together, eventually becoming part of OMA.

Zenghelis’s work uses a recurring pallet of mute tones as a way of describing form and landscape, a technique recognisable in Hadid’s painting. The result is landscapes that have a dreamlike quality, reminiscent of the Impressionists.

The exhibition showcases distinct phases of her painting, the first room juxtaposing her most famous pieces for OMA, where she painted speculative urban proposals and buildings such as those for the Roosevelt Island Housing Competition, and pieces from her more recent work as a painter in her own right, such as the enigmatic Tatania’s House, a single house in a tiled landscape that stretches back to infinity. With muted tones and deep perspective, Zenghelis pulls us into a fictional world. Fiction is perhaps something all the works share; all are unbuilt speculations. In the dialogue between the two parts one can see a breadth of exploration, recurring themes such as the Constructivist-inspired geometric studies, floating shapes and planes, and changes in her colour palette, which shifts and brightens in later work.

‘Colour’, says Zenghelis, ‘is fundamental to our perception. Surprisingly many architects are indifferent to it. Buildings are not black lines on white paper.’

Zenghelis spent much of her time trying to imbue her students with an understanding of colour, teaching them to use paint to describe shadows and materiality – details which are visible in paintings such as those of the Roosevelt Island Housing Competition. The room that reveals most about the aesthetic defining effect of her input is the delightful AA members room, which hosts archival walls. These walls, complete with tape, darkened over time, and handwritten notes, expose the drawing development process. Here you find a naked version of the Sphinx, in tech-pen, a tool one would be hard pressed to find in many an architect’s studio today.

Could this be ‘a time when things were perfect’? When we drew and rendered by hand? A time the post-digital age harks back to? This room in many ways was the most fascinating part of the show, demonstrating the power of Zhengelis’s work; the way it introduces narrative and playfulness. Elements of the Colour Workshop teaching process are also displayed here. The exhibition sits well in the Georgian AA building; a place with its own history of iconoclasm seems a fitting place for a Zoe Zenghelis retrospective.

Khosravi and the AA have done a great service by unearthing and sharing this work. We need to see more women’s contributions acknowledged and showcased in this way. The exhibition is a must-see for anyone interested in the process of architectural drawing and the use of colour, or of women and their contribution to architecture.

A corresponding exhibition ran at Betts Project from 3 December 2020 to 1 May 2021, which you can view virtually here.

Do you remember how perfect everything was? is at the AA Gallery until Wednesday 30 June 2021, 10:00 - 18:00. Booking is required.

Sarah Akigbogun is a London-based architect, filmmaker and educator and founder of Studio Aki .