Diamond Cuts: Sea of People
2016
Installation view
Suzhou Documents
Suzhou Art Museum
Curated by Roger Buergel, Suzhou, China
The installation includes a large-scale installation (cca 230 x 400cm) composed of simple skeletal architectural structures made of steel rods (coloured – powder coated), fabric (printed silk) and audio element (played on single channel speakers placed within the installation).
The work is considered as an island, both physically and in terms of time. The architectural structure serves as a backbone of the work, a shell, a vessel – but also as a drawing in space, a connector of thoughts. Starting points are several paintings developed in relation to the exhibition context. What I have in mind while making these paintings are processes such as: repercussions, sedimentations, accumulations, history/materiality of particular traded elements/ valuable goods, sea trade/economy, migration, surplus of production. In terms of dye I am thinking about its different economical/bio/geographical relevance at different points in history.
The fabric is light – sheer silk – so that the print and the colour is visible on both sides. Prints are details of previously made paintings developed through research during the preparation for this exhibition. They are of body parts, parts of objects, developed out of fragments of intertwined histories, frottage marks, lines. The print is minimal and it appears – floats in monochrome and just in places. There are 4 colours – so that each length is printed in a mono colour, each colour appears twice or once in order to make up 7 lenghts.
Audio element developed in collaboration with Alexis Taylor deals with the articulation of history or a particular narrative in which the voice (Alexis Taylor) is singing a text which loosely connects to one migrant story. I am interested in the idea that the elements of the work are not easily place-able in terms of media, colour (mimicry) or voice.
Diamond Cuts: Sea of People
2016
Audio loop
Conceived and written by Tina Gverović, sung by Alexis Taylor
01. Visit
02. In Half
03. Images
04. Champs-Elysees Economy