Memories of Cold Nights (2014), a series of works on paper produced alongside Risan’s latest paintings, contain domestic scenes that combine bold lines, delicately executed patterns, and quickly applied brushmarks. In contrast to Steps in Migration, however, the artist utilizes the white of the paper to figuratively communicate the intimacy and shelter of his interior setting as he centrally places protagonists. Without a defined background or foreground, objects are depicted from different angles and bent and fractured bodies seem to swim or levitate. The artist appears in each drawing, and although outwardly content in several works, the general theme of the series is the body (or self) in transformation. In a revealing scene, he is shown in pieces, dismembered and stacked on a low chair while a silhouetted female figure reaches out to him from a large mandala. Bringing to mind Stuart Hall’s characterization of “the displaced zone of the cultural,” the untitled drawing can be read as a “problem space,” an image that gives form to “the complexity of the real relations it seeks to explore.”[3] Risan’s paintings and drawings are deliberately ambiguous despite the inclusion of signs, allowing the viewer to trace the path of uncertainty that marks their surfaces.