REFLEX. A GARDEN AND OTHER THINGS TO TREASURE
2018
Looks down, is erect, or bends an arm;
on an impalpable certain rest.
Walt Whitman
Site-specific video installation. Overhead shot projection [5’20” in loop] on gravel, and sound composition in binaural audio, variable dimensions.
A site-specific work placed inside the art space and extending to the edges of the hall and the corridor, recreating the ruins of a garden. As in the artist’s other works, the concept of ruin in relation to the state of limbo, far from the decisive and the strictly graphic/commercial, is framed in notions of search and experience as a necessary return, alongside the possibility of retrieving, or perhaps not, what was lost during that state. Visitors will thus be immersed in an installation that will make them reflect on the nature of what is happening there, without knowing whether this garden is dying or slowly surviving.
The installation is composed of a gravel covering both the floor and part of the access to the viewing room, creating along with debris and plastic, a setting of ruins, interrumped in certain places where the remains of a garden seem to have survived: open terrariums first created by the artist in her studio. The audio for the installation features a piece composed during the production of the work, as well as two video and photo projections. The room, the ruins and the traces of a garden are completely flooded with this piece composed of self-referential sounds and a piano melody; composition based on the study and listening to music in low hertz frequencies, which was also used during the extensive 2-year work in progress, as a kind of soundtrack and in tandem, a time for healing and creation. The project included a series of photographs that currently comprises the collection of the Ministry of Culture, Arts and Heritage of Chile.
The immersive site-specific installation was exhibited from July to September 2018 at MAC, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo [Santiago, Chile], later with second and third versions of the work for the Multidisciplinary Festival of Arts I am my body, I am my memory, at Officine Forte Marghera [2019, Venice, Italy], at the 58th Venice Biennale, and in the 32nd Annual Show, own-curated for the collective exhibition Colapso at MAM, Museo de Arte Moderno de Chiloé [2020, Castro, Chile].
MAC exhibition photographs by Jorge Brantmayer.