Event
Between Here and TherePost an Event »
Alter Space
October 24 - November 7, 2015Info
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http://alterspace.co/
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(415) 735-1158
Reception
October 24, 2015 7:00 pm to 10:00 pm
Multi-disciplinary artist Rachel Dawson’s residency at Alter Space culminates in Between Here and There, an installation of luminous sculptural objects. For this site-specific exhibition, Dawson utilized the jail cell as a “spirit cabinet”, which is the intimate space a medium would enter in order to contact and channel spirit energy. The porcelain sculptures, called “ectoplasms”, appear suspended in air, creating a lush liminal space between our world and what may lie beyond. Dawson explores ectoplasm – a physics concept advanced during the Victorian era – as metaphor for the relation between external matter, thought, and creative production. Mediums’ bodies were thought to contain and exude ectoplasm, acting as a transmitter for cosmic or otherworldly vibrations. More subversively, female mediums successfully eluded social and medical proscriptions of the day, effectively challenging the dominant trope of “woman as hysterical vessel” with knowledge and agency.