Phenomena
2012 ~ ongoing
The project Phenomena began a few years ago when my father passed away. I needed to explore life and death cycles and interconnections, entropy and how to lessen its effects. Out of a larger curiosity about energy, its exchange and transformation, this project was born. I wanted to challenge established categories of subjectivity and work on re-integrating what we call the mind with what we call the body, the human with the non-human. The project’s emphasis on energy is conceptual and experimental, formal and experiential. By extrapolation, what is exchangeable —energy, goods— is the economic. Focusing on alternative understandings of the economic as reciprocal, ethic and balanced exchanges is at the core of my inquiry.
The project so far consists of drawings, objects and texts. One set of drawings is composed of indexical traces of all the recycled containers from my household, gold ink on black paper. Recycling by tracing, I give the container a life of its own, bringing discarded containers to the category of a body. The texts are experimental essays and poems; sometimes these writings become part of another set of drawings. Objects are medium-sized sculptures that recycle inert and living matter such as cardboard, plastic, glass and discarded plants. Questions of value, belief systems and desire are at the core of Phenomena.