Garden for Drowning Descendant/Garden Sequence from “Flying and Drowning Dream,“ interactive mixed reality installation, 2022, with performer Danielle McPhatter.
Eva Davidova makes new media works that focus on ecological disaster, our interdependence as a species, and the political implications of technology which she unpacks with performative works rooted in the absurd. She imagines the paradox that one day our descendants–human or cyborg–will be constructing our reality as a simulation, and asks: “If we are the games our children will program one day, can we influence the code they are writing?”
Michael A. Robinson’s site-specific project Somma, at DISPLAY in Parma, Italy, is the sum of many parts, all operating in tandem. The installation appears simple, featuring three wall-mounted LED works and metal arcs and hoops suspended from the ceiling. The space’s glossy floor and glass façade and door reflect the light emitted by the LEDs, potentially multiplying their presence based on the viewer’s position and the level of ambient light.
ADJUSTED for Inflation, Part 1 installation image. (Artworks visible by Sandra Zanetti, Taisha Brehaut, Bartho Staalman, and Amir Hariri.) Photo by Jenna London.
ADJUSTED for Inflation, the group show curated by curator-in-residence Ashley Ouderkirk at Kunstraum LLC features eighteen works by fourteen members and artists in residence—Annette Back, Taisha Brehaut, Laura Clark, Aleksy Cisowski, Giacomo Colosi, Amir Hariri, Catherine Lewis, Rita Nannini, Olga Rabetskaya, Bartho Staalman, Sato Sugamoto, Dimana Zaharieva, Cassandra Zampini, and Sandra Zanetti. The title, ADJUSTED for Inflation, is based on the economic term referring to the “real” value of money, after considering how much the price of an average good or service has increased. The curator says that the exhibition, like the economic concept, aims to reveal how our emotions determine the “real” value of any situation—the more complex the hardship, the greater the emotional cost and more distorted the adjustment. It runs through September 10th, 2022.
Secrets between (Wo)Men & Nature, single channel video, 2021
Chalet Comellas-Baker uses video, sound, installation, and print to interrogate memory, environment, and place. The Nashville-based artist is inspired by her Spanish, Cuban and American roots and often references Latin American diasporic histories through her personal lens of assimilation. As the co-owner of Unrequited Leisure, she brings a new dynamic of screen-based artwork with critical and topical investigations into Nashville’s growing art scene.
