The lockdown in England is beginning to ease and as we all begin to emerge blinking into the sunlight, it is going to be very interesting to see how artists have used drawing and other practices to think about the situation they have just experienced. I know that it has been a subject many of the students I have been working with have taken on board and as a subject I suspect it is going to be with us for quite some time yet.
Szu-Han Ho has been thinking about making devices to help people cope with the fact they are not allowed to touch anyone. By making the drawings out of little scraps of material she is able to heighten the feeling of fragility and unworthiness many of us began to have as time went on and we began to yearn for a time when you could just simply hug someone. My grandchildren live in Scotland and I've not been able to see them in the flesh for a year now, so I found these little fragile images particularly poignant.
Device for Hugging, COVID19
Device for Bingewatching, COVID19
Device for Spooning (Big Spoon), COVID19
Szu-Han Ho has done some very interesting work and she is a good example of an artist that can respond to life as it emerges from fiction as well as real life situations. I have read far more this last year than for a while and this may be the case for many of us, if we cant go out and have real life experiences we have to get our stories from somewhere.
Taking something from the past and reimagining it is something I suspect many of us have done this year.
Dario Robleto | Body as Data
Dario Robleto talks about his work
We have had to look at graphs and listen to statistics about bodies every morning, evening and night this past year and we can forget that amongst masses of data for every point on a graph there is a real human being having a real traumatic reaction to something that is totally and hugely significant to that individual. Dario Robleto tries to remind us of this by returning to images made of heartbeats during the late 19th century.
Jonathan Borofsky's 'Heartlight' 1991
Robleto's work reminded me of Jonathan Borofsky's 'Heartlights' the first of which I saw in Barcelona in 1992, these sculptures sent out an audio and visual transmission of his heartbeat and as you stood in front of one you felt your own body attune to the constant rhythmic beat and visual flickering. Borofsky's 'Heartlight' is still one of the most powerful self-portraits I have ever come across, somehow you were sucked into his actual body; levels of empathy were raised incredibly high simply by experiencing someone else's heartbeat so intensely.
Rafael Lozano-Hemmer 'Last Breath'
Rafael Lozano-Hemmer's work is always interesting. I remember seeing a wonderful installation of his in Venice, whereby he had the ceiling of a large space covered in light bulbs, an on and off pulse was being carried from one light bulb to another. When you reached the other end of the space you had just walked through, you were directed to climb up to a dais and hold two electronic sensors that were used to calculate the rhythm of your heart beat, this rhythm was then passed on to a light bulb right above your head, gradually the rhythm was passed on to other light bulbs until you lost sight of your own pulse amongst all the others. However the work that for me holds most resonance in relation to our current situation is 'Last Breath'. This is an installation designed to store and circulate the breath of a person forever. A brown paper bag inflates and deflates automatically due to a motorised bellows similar to those found in artificial respirators in hospitals. The apparatus hangs on a wall and is activated 10,000 times a day, the typical respiratory frequency for an adult at rest, and it punctuates this relentless series of breaths with an occasional sigh, 158 of them a day. Each stroke of the machine advances a digital counter that beeps. The breath circulates between the bellows and the paper bag through a ribbed transparent plastic tube that emits a faint and hypnotic low sound, whilst the paper bag makes a rhythmic crushing sound as it inflates and deflates. The first copy of the piece stores the breath of Cuban singer Omara Portuondo; so that after she dies people will be able to still experience her "Last Breath".
I'm sure that once the pandemic crisis is over we will find that some wonderful pieces of art have been made in response to it, but what the best work does is to transcend the particular situation and to find something of universal significance.
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