ARTIST: Alexandra Iosub

DATES: December 1st - 30th

ARTIST STATEMENT:

For the last 8 years, I've been working on a research project called Making Room, which was aimed at finding the necessary practices that help a person create a space for themselves in this world, with all the implications. This project started with building a tiny house from scratch and inhabiting it. The method was visually investigating the relationship between body and space through three distinct lenses: relationships, rituals, and restrictions, which were inspired by Taiye Selasi's talk on origin and identity (Don't Ask Where I'm From Now, Ask Where I'm a Local). Now that house is destroyed, and the project is complete.

This show holds work from all the stages of the Making Room project, with a focus on the last stage, the rituals stage. It is also limited by the amount of art that survived the crash that destroyed the house. In the last stage of the project I looked at how meaning is pulled from the habits formed in relationships to the space, and elevated to a spiritual level, in the evolution to a place-based personal spiritual practice. The background form was inspired by the Advaita Vedanta philosophy of the South-East, which states that the world is an appearance in consciousness and not the other way around, and that there is no duality.

The question at the core of this show is Vedantic in nature: is there in fact is a distinct space between knowing and being. Ancient philosophy states that there isn't, that knowing the truth is simultaneous with being the truth, but the question must be answered by each of us in turn, because our singular human experience is the only reality we can be entirely sure of.

Visit the Artist’s Website and Instagram.