Faint young sun (letters to a future)

Faint young sun (letters to a future) is Mark Maurangi Carrol's debut solo exhibition with Nasha Gallery, examining hauntology, text, and the human figure in painting. The exhibition features paintings and paper works of deliberately disparate scale, presenting ambiguous figures stripped of identifying markers. Many compositions depict figures adorned with backpacks in states of suggested movement, engaging with unknown or obscured elements. The work stems from Carrol's recent trip to the Cook Islands, where he photographed family members in gardens and communal spaces. The backpack serves as a universal symbol of travel and migration, representing the essential belongings and memories that migrants carry—their dreams, aspirations, and cultural heritage. Carrol combines text and image to create a new artistic language. Drawing from diverse sources including poems, internet forums, interviews, street signs, and misspelt words from family gravestones, the textual elements function as a call and response with viewers. By overlaying handwritten or printed words onto images, Carrol creates fragmentation and dislocation, mirroring how memories fade or distort over time.