FREEZE, THAW, BEGIN AGAIN / ZAMRZNI, ODTALI, ZAČNI ZNOVA
In this exhibition at D'CLINICstudios in Lendava, Slovenia, I explored ideas of self and identity through mixed media pieces that combine vintage anatomical diagrams, photographs, sewing, hardware, fragments from a Slovenian-English phrasebook, found objects. These images use the body as a metaphor for a larger sense of self and identity, and thus pose questions about the relationship of the mind to the body, the possibility of transformation and healing, ideas of belonging and home, and the ability to locate the self in relation to unfamiliar environments. The exhibition title refers to images that were frozen inside blocks of ice… and slowly melted during the exhibition opening, giving access to the photographs inside. I’m interested in ice as a reference to outside conditions during this winter artist residency, but also as metaphor for larger ideas of internal “thawing” – the sense of solidified ways of being and living melting away, making it possible to become something new.
