It Sounds Like Love
It Sounds Like Love, 2021-2022, exhibition installation creates a place of encounter with nine Ohio prairie seeds: Wild Bergamot, Big Blue Stem, Echinacea, Little Blue Stem, Dogbane, Switch Grass, Milkweed, and Black-eyed Susan.
Guests are invited to remove their shoes, enter the space, and walk on the artwork—etched glass images produced by the sound vibrations of the unsprouted seeds, themselves. Entering calls us to connect with our sense perceptions, to feel, to smell, to listen, and to be absorbed into direct experience.
The exhibition’s materiality of glass panels nestled among traditional Japanese mats made of rice straw and soft rush grass (tatami) interweaves an auto-biography. Born and raised in Japan for eighteen years, here I also trace my maternal lineage to Ohio, and my grandmother’s professional associations with glass art, to my family’s work with glass in the automobile industry, and to hot Ohio Summers spent on the waters of Lake Erie. Each unique, primordial form visible on the glass panels was originally captured by the Japanese art of suminigashi, or floating ink, which begins with 22 concentric circles of deep, black ink (sumi) floating on water and, here, moved by the sound vibration of the seeds.
It Sounds Like Love is a veritable act of reciprocity and a response to the damage we have done to mother earth. It is an offering that encourages us to listen deeply as we walk among the seeds’ messages that enshrine us, the intelligence of our more-than-human companions. If we linger long enough, these nine local seeds will teach us many things about ourselves.
27 August 2021- 22 April 2022
Curator: Janice Glowski
Performance at ING Art Collection - March 4th
Love. Hate. Debate.
Performance
March 4th, Brussels
From 23 October 2019 until 15 March 2020.
“This is not an exhibition. And you are not just a visitor.” This is how you are welcomed at the ING Art Center from 23 October 2019. With Love. Hate. Debate. we invite you to think about the special relationship that you can have with a work of art. A relationship that goes beyond first impressions and results in a conversation with the art piece, with yourself and with the world.
The Love. Hate. Debate. Start a Conversation with the ING Collection expo will introduce the general public for the first time to the ING collection, which was one of the very first corporate collections almost 60 years ago. The collection has remained true to the pioneering and innovative spirit of founder Baron Lambert.
Performance & Lecture evening / musée de la chasse et de nature
Paris
A very special evening lecture and performance on the 19th of June 2019 in Paris at the MUSEE DE LA CHASSE ET NATURE. Together with Bl!ndman Composer Gillis Sacré we will give a talk and live performance with the curators of the museum and other invited guests.
The Svalbard Global Seed Vault - Seed cultures archive
Svalbard
In a deep cavern carved inside a frozen mountain on an island high up in the Arctic lies the most biodiverse room in the world. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault holds over one million samples of seeds from all around the world. The Vault serves as a ‘back-up’ in case disaster (e.g. fire, flood, civil war) strikes the gene banks holding the original collections. However, the Seed Vault contains no information about the cultural significance of seeds; no stories about how they are cultivated, by whom, for what purposes, using what rituals, etc. The seeds are frozen in isolation from all the social practices, ecological relations, and cultural histories that give them life.
The Seed Cultures Initiative seeks to create an archive of visual artworks to help conserve the cultural heritage of seeds. Its aim is to celebrate the way seeds live within vast webs of interrelations and to honor the fertile bonds between biological and cultural diversity in agri-food systems.
The Seed Cultures Archive website brings together images and projects from artists working across genres and disciplines, who place seeds in their focus. This is to showcase exceptional work exploring the life of seeds through art and culture, and to provide a platform for connection and network building. The website includes images and project statements from a range of international artists engaged with the culture and aesthetics of seeds.
The seed confronts the very kernel of our human value systems. I became intrigued in the material and immaterial quality of seeds especially following my relatively recent discovery of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, “the safest place on earth”, in 2016. Indeed this discovery has sparked a series of paper and golden seed vaults disguised as golden monochrome paintings that can be planted in face of disaster. Each work has the potential to yield plants of diverse colors and sizes specifically curated to nourish the soil and feed the bees in the area where the work is exhibited.
Black Gold - Performance lecture / Contour 9
Mechelen
In Mechelen, Belgium on the 12th of January 10:30AM-1:30PM, performance lecture open to all, as an inauguration of the outdoor installation, Black Gold. Stay tuned for our outdoor ritual performance as part of the Black Gold project, taking place on May 17 in Mechelen as part of the many events organised with CONTOUR 9. www.contour9.be/en/contour/
Presenting Contour Biennale 9 / Khiasma
Paris
In Paris on Wednesday the 5th of December at 7:00PM, a presentation of Contour Biennale 9 by curator Nataša Petrešin-Bachelez at the partner institution Khiasma. We will engage in a Heart-to-Heart conversation with Collective Coyote, currently in residence at Khiasma, the historical location in Les Lilas, as a part of the project “a place to breathe”: the rebirth of a new place, reconstruction of a collective way to invent hospitality, debate and knowledge sharing. Khiasma, 15 rue Chassagnolle, 93260 Les Lilas (Paris) Free Admission, please RSVP: contour@nona.be
Semer / La peau de l'ours
Bruxelles
This Sunday December 2nd opening at 2PM in Brussels, "Semer", curated by La peau de l'ours. An afternoon reception this Sunday followed by a evening welcome on the 6th of December. Chaussée de Waterloo, 690, 1180 Brussels, Belgium, info@lapeaudelours.net