Words without letters (2012)
Installation: tree roots, projection screen, sound
There is an ancient myth that keeps resurfacing. In the old times, when people had secrets they didn't want to share, but also could not keep inside, they would go and find a tree and whisper it into the tree. Then these words would go down to the very roots and would be preserved there, never coming up again. The roots would stay underground, away from daylight, and so would the secrets. Alyona Larionova uses this story and visually expands it further by adding extra layers of poetic reflection. Here the artist explores how words literally travel. Her main interest lies in producing new reality that is on the borderline between the real and the imaginary. The central focus her film-based site-specific installation is on the roots that are motionless, static, but they have also grown into something else, slowly, but powerfully transformed. It could be regarded as a simple gesture, but the gesture that simultaneously talks about stability and progress, action and passivity. As 'organic' as possible, her film-based installation achieves to create a feeling that the roots have physically become part of the architectural surroundings, as if intervened into the existing gallery space.
Here the artist's role could be encouraging. The viewers can see her works as short poetic investigations on some of the basic myths or animalistic narrations that still construct our inner beliefs. We live in a time where the flow of words and information is infinite and sometimes it feels like the thread of the 'actual story' has been lost. Could it be that this 'actual story' is rooted in things that were meant to be forgotten but keep resurfacing all the time? What if these ancient trees also whisper their secrets in shared local environmental conditions and pass them on via their roots? Do we have secrets of our own at all?
Installation: tree roots, projection screen, sound
There is an ancient myth that keeps resurfacing. In the old times, when people had secrets they didn't want to share, but also could not keep inside, they would go and find a tree and whisper it into the tree. Then these words would go down to the very roots and would be preserved there, never coming up again. The roots would stay underground, away from daylight, and so would the secrets. Alyona Larionova uses this story and visually expands it further by adding extra layers of poetic reflection. Here the artist explores how words literally travel. Her main interest lies in producing new reality that is on the borderline between the real and the imaginary. The central focus her film-based site-specific installation is on the roots that are motionless, static, but they have also grown into something else, slowly, but powerfully transformed. It could be regarded as a simple gesture, but the gesture that simultaneously talks about stability and progress, action and passivity. As 'organic' as possible, her film-based installation achieves to create a feeling that the roots have physically become part of the architectural surroundings, as if intervened into the existing gallery space.
Here the artist's role could be encouraging. The viewers can see her works as short poetic investigations on some of the basic myths or animalistic narrations that still construct our inner beliefs. We live in a time where the flow of words and information is infinite and sometimes it feels like the thread of the 'actual story' has been lost. Could it be that this 'actual story' is rooted in things that were meant to be forgotten but keep resurfacing all the time? What if these ancient trees also whisper their secrets in shared local environmental conditions and pass them on via their roots? Do we have secrets of our own at all?