Monday, February 7, 2011

Drifter

Installation

I did my first installation/performance on February 3rd, titled "Drifter". The installation is part of a cultural and artistic event called ARTBLOCK, which is taking place in Panama for the second year; this ARTBLOCK, which was on February 3rd, was the first of three for this season.
For more information on the ARTBLOCK, here is a link to the group in Facebook: ARTBLOCK - Panamá
The theme for this ARTBLOCK was light, how each artist took that, that was their problem. SO, we had a meeting for the participating artists to be informed of this and to know each other, about a month and a half before the event took place, and a couple of days later, I though of what I was going to do, which is pretty much what you see in the pictures.

I used, white fabric, for the outfit and limiting the space on the floor, a white fabric that resembles organza for the outfit, white body and face paint and seven christmas lights. Two pieces of the white fabric where used to make a square on the floor, I originally wanted everything to be white, but a place like that wasn't found, so I AT LEAST needed the ground to be white and limited. The lights on the ground, were bunched up, like a snake when it coils, in order to make "islands", with the lights and the lights were not meant to be in any order or have symmetry.

The outfit, I didn't mean for it to be so asymmetric, but I made it myself lol I actually didn't really know what I wanted her to wear or if I wanted her to be almost naked. Or, rather, not naked, but like with a white body suit or something. Then I decided I wanted her to have a rectangle or white cloth covering her down to her thighs. I also wanted her to have long, black, straight, kind of stringy hair; but I ditched that, 'cuz it was TOO warm. I also wanted her to have black eyes, but I wasn't able to get black contacts for the night of the performance, and I was pretty sure my eyes would look dark enough, because I was wearing chalk white paint.

She was meant to be walking around the islands of lights, with no specific course. I decided on the title of the installation/performance a day or two before the ARTBLOCK actually took place. And I was going to get a girl to do it in the beginning, but everything was so vague about it, that I decided to just get myself in there; I wasn't going to be able to explain myself.
I walked in the installation for maybe two hours and a half and I was SO. TIRED. When I finished, my lower back hurt, my knees hurt, my Achilles' tendons hurt, my feet hurt and all I did was walk in that limited space.

I imagined her walking and walking and actually looking at some people, but with a really vacant stare and pretty emotionless face, no sign of recognition, sometimes looking behind them. Mostly just walking around the lights.
It was pretty difficult for me to start and "get into character". And it was still difficult, even after I'd been in the installation for a while, because if I saw a friend or something, I still smiled at them or waved.

SO, here are some of the pictures.

This next one my favorite picture






Here is a link to the album in my page, with many more pictures of my installation and a couple of pictures from the ARTBLOCK: Anything and Everything ARTBLOCK. And while you're at it, DO like my page! I'm really glad and proud, because it made it to one thousand likes last week! I hope that can be kept up and that the page can keep growing, so go ahead and suggest it to all of your friends with the suggest to friends button that is under the profile picture!
See you there and thank you for reading <3

1 comment:

  1. So Cool, I like it very much, Gabriela.
    Interesting in fact.

    ReplyDelete