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Fata
Morgana,
India
Working
in silence. Composing with hundreds of photographs and fragments of
poems created
during artistic investigation journeys through India and Nepal, revisiting
encountered or imagined situations. Superposing the space of the
traveler with the space of the artist and that of the
museum. Visitors were allowed to silently browse
through what was a 'diary in the making' of these journeys,
re-constructed for them in
the exhibition space.
  After
seven days of continuous working with the material of sitting in
silence, a discussion of the installation~performance and of the
journey took place. From that point on, visitors were welcome to take over the
place of the artist, to compose their own pages of a fictive travel journal, using
images from the installation, and eventually take home this 'memory' of their imagined
journey through India/Nepal, as an inspiration for future travels.
*
The idea was to shed a light on
the 'Other' in a way other than mass media and travel agencies do. In
the Western/European context, what we usually have acces to from these countries, are images
depicting natural or economic catastrophies, corruption and poverty,
documentaries about rare species, shiny commercials for
expensive holiday spa's, luxurious cottages and self-development retreats
- the exotic and the spiritual as products of the tourism industry. The
images I shared were of random moments of everyday life, the kind of
encouters we may have with old schoolmates, close friends or family,
seeing one another without issues of trust, trade or any kind of
desired outcome in the back of our minds. Just seeing. Exposing a socio-cultural
puzzle of images from a space customary seen as exotic or dangerous, in a way that
brings it closer to 'home', home as a sense of familiarity, of
contagion. A place that includes without presuming embrace as a possible form of encounter, of reciprocity. A two-weeks long installation/performance hosted by Muzeul de Arta Cluj-Napoca, Sala Atelier, at the invitation of its Director Alexandra Rus. |