Next to the title card for Ferocious Grace, a new exhibition at the Old Fire Station of 18 paintings by Usha depur Kar, is a graphic created by the Centre of Community Organization in Montreal, Canada, based on a professional pattern they had witnessed repeatedly. The graphic employs text and a spare line drawing to illustrate a character's journey through a workplace. There are six sections: The Woman of Colour Enters the Organization --> Tokenized Hire --> Repetitive Injury and Microaggressions --> Denial of Racism --> Target and Attack --> The Woman of Colour Exits the Organization.

This is, in a nutshell, the story arc of Ferocious Grace. But while the graphic makes the situation it describes concrete and hypothetical, the paintings plunge us into the internal turmoil and deep exhaustion such treatment wreaks on its recipient.

The figure from CoCO’s graphic is the protagonist and is painted primarily in two ways across the images: a luminous orange dot, or a fiercely feminal bird creature. These two very disparate representations reflect the twin styles interspersed through the art: corporate systems are pared down to shapes and objects, while the inner world is one of rich and limitless texture.

These styles are brought together by unifying colour choices and echoing symbology: like in a dream, motifs appear again and again, remixed throughout. The clasp of fingers mirrors in one image mirrors the ventricles of a heart, which appears in both a self-portrait and orbiting a depiction of Maat, the Egyptian God of Truth and order. Ghanian symbols adorn a discarded set of fingernails in a claustrophobic painting referencing Bluebeard’s wives. A menacing shoal of fish depicted moving as one, with predatorily-placed eyes - that is, only looking forward - have scales that fade into netting. The same netting shape later appears in a shot of the protagonist resurfacing from deep beneath the waves; I could go on.

Ferocious Grace plays like a movie. Kar originally envisioned the paintings hung in a long row, (due to space constraints, they are hung in sets of two or four) and it’s immediately clear why. There is a cinematic thrill to the narrative of the images, viewed one after another.

The first four paintings introduce the organization as a series of rigid shapes overlaying three connected circles (another recurring motif), then show the warmth and flattery being rained upon the protagonist as a buttery orange glow (the painting is entitled ‘In the Gaslight’), then the protagonist being told they are the missing piece, then finally, the small orange marble of their self being caught in a pair of enormous, carefully rendered gears. You can practically hear the grinding, and the longer I looked at it, the more painful it felt - no mean feat for a painting with such an abstract subject.

Throughout, Kar takes emotional beats and transmutes them into imagery. The feeling of being surveilled and caged in becomes a literal birdcage, filled with clipped uniform eyes, gazing out imperiously. The cage’s shape brings to mind the inside of a panopticon - an observational building used to leave prisoners with the impression they are always being watched.

Piece by piece, the paintings are also profoundly beautiful. The way Kar ensnares light to create depth and dimension is mesmerizing. There's a painting featuring a deep pit, which looked so real I felt an irrational urge to try and put my hand through it. In another, the light-reflecting down into reedy, shallow water seemed to shine off the canvas. Throughout, the hyper-specificity of the colour choices balances the surreality of the images, so even when you are not entirely sure what you're looking at, you are absolutely certain you're looking at something.

The penultimate picture deserves particular mention. Taking the outline of an earlier portrait - a striking rendering of a woman’s torso - the protagonist's body has been shattered and is glued back together in lines of gold (the piece is entitled ‘kintsugi’) - and each of the shards is now a smaller painting of familial figures, rendered in a nostalgic honeysuckle glow. The piece has mountains to say about shared traumas, the way the body remembers, and finding healing in mutual understanding, community and home.

The final image returns to the same interlocking, circular pattern as the first, cleaner and sharper now, as if to represent a fresh start. There is our orange dot, poised in the corner of the image, venturing back into the world. And yet - it’s not an entirely triumphant end, nor can it be.

You’re left with the impression the protagonist has carefully rebuilt her damaged walls, only to have to wheel herself out into a world where this will inevitably happen again. You feel the leaden expectation put on this character, to fix a system that’s designed to make her professionally impotent, and resented for illuminating any injustice. Until the people benefitting from the current power structures in these workplaces make a real, active effort to challenge and resist them and open the place to change, this pattern will repeat itself.

Speaking with Kar, she was quick to point out the pieces are not intended to antagonize or villainize white viewers. This struck me as abundantly clear upon viewing the paintings, but I suppose when there’s an agenda in place designed to silence you, your honesty feels like an indictment to some. The paintings do, however, do an excellent job of clarifying how white silence in the face of racist power structures is not neutral. This makes the series galvanizing viewing for everyone, really; whether from a place of cathartic recognition or thoughtful reckoning.

Ferocious Grace will be free to view in the Old Fire Station’s gallery until the 5th November. Kar will also be leading a conversation on her inspiration behind the work, and how to challenge institutional racism, at The Old Fire Station on Saturday, October 8th and Tuesday, October 25th. Both talks are free to attend and can be booked via the Old Fire Station website.