Event 2

On May 10^th, 2017, I attended Eli Joteva’s solo exhibition, which she named as “mnemoawari”. Before attending the show, I was wondering what the word “mnemowari” means as I never heard of this word and it shows nothing on the internet other than the exhibition description when I searched it up on the internet. If I heard it correctly, “mnemowari” is the combination of two words: Japanese word “Mono no aware” and name of Greek Goddess “Mnemosyne”.

There are several different aspects to this solo exhibition. When we go into the EDA Broad Art Center, at the entrance area, there is a photo of what seems like blue light or blue wave projected on the screen on the wall. She named this "Dream  Augur" and this is a "projected photograph of a dream-wave portrait." I've heard that this is supposed to be the image of future and there is the glass of water in the center with the beams of sleeping person's brainwaves surrounding the glass. This was really interesting piece of work as it was very shocking to me of how she came up with the idea of using person's brainwaves to create a work piece.

There are three different cryo sculptures are hanging down from the ceiling and this was supposed to depict present. I believe these are made of plants, flowers, and mushrooms. She spent months on these projects and plants, flowers, and mushrooms had been frozen at really low temperatures (this is why the art works are called "cryo" sculptures) separately with water. So looking at these cryo scuptures falling apart little by little was another aspect of the exhibition. The sound created by the melting ice with the loud background sound effect of dripping sound that were being played inside the room enhanced the beauty of the project. 

 

Right after passing through these pieces, there was a VR which all of us can use to view the shape and detail of sculpture. This sound-reactive VR experience is there to depict of show the view from within. It was my first time having experience of using VR technology, so it was very interesting and worth going to the show. 

Then, there were three big screens projecting three different sculptures on three different corners which are supposed to depict the past. These screenings helped me to see how exactly these sculptures look like. When I went to the exhibition, quite a big part of the sculpture already melt down, so it was difficult to tell how it looked like at the beginning, but screens of detailed imaging of the sculptures was able to show its original appearance. Probably this was not her intention, but these photos somehow looked like the depiction of planet to me. 

When someone asked her how she came up with the idea for her work, she said the idea suddenly came to her one day. The answer was slightly disappointing, but still it made total sense at the same time, because I heard about how for some artists, inspiration suddenly comes to them one night.

Not every single aspect was satisfying. The artist did not give detailed description of her works, probably because place was pretty busy and quite a lot of people were coming in and out. It seems like she definitely had concept and message that she wanted to present to us, because On the entrance, she has the paper that shows what her exhibition is about (past, present, view from within, and future), but she did not explain why and how each parts of her exhibition are portraying the timeline. However, I would still recommend this show to the other people, because even without knowledge or descriptions, art pieces themselves were very fascinating, unique and marvelous to look at. It was so amazing how freezing natural resources with water can become part of the art performance.

Here is the photo proof of me at the event with Eli Joteva, who is the artist of the exhibition and also my TA.