
Concept including relation to the 2020/2021 curatorial theme The Space Between Us
Variations on Broken Lines evokes questions about our current experiences of the “real” or “live” moment, exploring how our understandings of “real” space-time is challenged by the physical distance between us, and the complexity of virtual mediation, while simultaneously considering possibilities for new and different practices of creation, relation and connection in these changing times. This work invites consideration of how notions of liminality emerge in a time when our bodies, identities, and environments are becoming displaced, intermediated, and impalpable. The project evokes reflection on how the pandemic activates a global rite of passage, characterized by dynamic forces, provoking disruptions of various kinds of borders, and enhancing potentials for socio-political, cultural, and personal pattern shifting. Therefore, my project reflects the theme “The Space Between Us” with the focus on connection(s) across boundaries of space and place, time, culture and communities, and even varying identifications in the context of both liminal, diasporic identity and the effects of the current pandemic. Not only are these thematic ideas apparent in my work, the nature of my creative process itself mirrors the focus on building bridges and connections; moreover, my multimedia art practice utilizes techniques of layering, weaving, and blurring/blending forms and gestures to consider and reflect the view that there is knowledge and points of connection in the spaces between different borders/boundaries. My work envisions the spaces between us as rich with stories and knowledge to be shared, and with possibilities for building connections. The feeling of in-between-ness is an on-going dwelling, layered with intricate and fluid patterns of movements and connections to others and places across time and space. And now, in this current pandemic, experiences of liminal identity and interconnections (across boundaries of time, space and place, cultures and communities, generations, and nations) become further complicated because we are experiencing an immense loss of “real” space-time, and much of our lived experience has become mediated through the virtual realm. The space between us has become a space that is challenged by the complexity of virtual mediations. Our pandemic reality has not only become a (mediated) space between us and others, it also illuminates space between our multiple selves—our past and present, intercultural, inter-geographical, inter-national, and social selves that are inscribed upon our bodies. Rooted in these ideas, interests, and experiences, my project utilizes visual translations of forms and gestures, using various conceptual choreographic methods, to explore movement and the different temporalities crossing the boundaries of media.