6094 folds

My current work is an exposition detailing the reality of how making art can produce and cultivate thought. It is a project that started with a methodical approach to natural light and aesthetics, that due to my empathetic response transformed into something bigger than myself. It became a metaphor for changing perspectives, getting out of comfort zones, putting in the effort, humans helping humans, and spreading ideas through aesthetics and curiosity. It has become a tool to connect and communicate with other people about difficult topics, and the dark side of human experience in an environment that is creative and beautiful.

Without asking people started giving me paper.

Without asking people would sit down to help me. The mirror became a challenge to peoples comfortable physicalities as they needed to squat to see the red paper in the corner. The previously billowing curtain is sewed to the floor to increase the atmosphere that the room is frozen in time. Firstly for the metaphor, when you stop putting in the work nothing moves forward or changes… Secondly, because the entire work and experience is time-based, so once I have left the room the project itself stops. Nothing accumulates and nothing grows. After a conversation with a tutor, I realised that conceptually the project could be repeated but since my work is so based on time and experience most likely the material with change with each iteration. The live stream was probably what made me the most uncomfortable of anything I have done, and I have performed live in front of 1500 people at the age of 10. But it was important during these Digital times to not show something flashy and entraining, but the reality of the process. The hours put in, the not so entertaining effort that goes into what is in the end intended for consumption by the viewer.

Once all 6094 folds were completed I stepped into the room, opening the window and letting the elements re-take the room. The frozen room doesn’t achieve anything anymore. No one is talking, no one is making. What we worked so hard for has now reached a state of stagnation and complacency. We need to re-enter that state of uncertainty and tension in order to connect and grow.