HERE
One of the most exciting artistic highlights of this past summer for me was a group art exhibition, entitled HERE, where I showed one of my new pieces, Letters Between the (Coast) Lines. The exhibit took place at Northampton's A.P.E. at Window gallery in July and August. It was collaboratively curated by a group of all 8 participating artists, who were brought together by Cancade Bradbury-Carllin, a talented and driven curator and artist. The artists, all with strong connections to the Pioneer Valley are: Sarah Bliss, Candace Bradbury-Carlin, Sally Curcio, Karen Dolmanisth, Elizabeth Duffy, Taiga Ermansons, Theresa Rock, and myself. I was awe-struck with the richness, inventiveness, and the power of each one of them, and how those qualities translate, in very individual and uniquely profound ways, into their work. The exhibit included a video installation, an ongoing performance, sculpture, painting, drawing, installation, and photography.
I started working on assembly pieces made of fragments of my photographs printed on airmail paper. Printing on airmail paper became a battle I was bent on winning. I tinkered with my ink jet printer, its settings, and with many different ways to feed it this barely-there paper. Finally, after several days of experimentation, after the pile of used ink cartridges and discarded precious sheets paper had grown to unsetling proportions, I had finally found the way, and streamlined the process.
The thought of printing on such a fragile ephemeral material came to me when I started contemplating the meaning of "here" for me, in preparation for the show.
The following is my artist's statement for the exhibition, HERE.
"I've been pondering the meaning of HERE ever since this group of artists came together to produce the exhibit, HERE. Is it a destination? A permanent address? A place along a path? A state of being? I think for me, here and now, its meaning is hinged around my experiences of someone who is living far away from her homeland, and from many people close to her, and who has adopted a language she learned well into her 20s. I have, through the years, kept exchanging letters with those I left behind. And these handwritten letters have become a bond that has kept me close to them, and what has nurtured our relationships. I am currently working on a series of photographs printed, in fragments, on airmail paper and envelopes. Both the content of the images, and the method of their presentation refer to the ephemeral, fragile and sometimes hidden quality of our existence, relationships and of the ever evolving sense of self, while representing a kind of a bridge between the different lives I have lived, on three different continents, a bridge to "here". With its lightness and functionality, airmail paper becomes a fragmented canvas for the stories of our lives, the snippets from which we learn about each other. The air and the water in the printed images becomes the carrier of life, a potent pregnant messenger and sustainer of life itself."
Thank you so much, to all of you who came to see the show, and to those who couldn't make it, but wanted to, for all your wonderful feedback, your energy and inspiration!
Love,
anita
Letters Between the (Coast) Lines - I (Diptych)
Chennai, India. Indian Ocean, Sunrise. February 2010 - Wellfleet MA, USA. Atlantic Ocean, Sunset. June 2010
