September 2017 / In The Backspace: Sleep Study
Nola Avienne. Dark Maps: Lucid.
2016
Watercolor and eye shadow on roofing paper
44"x40"
Nola Avienne. Dark Maps: Theta.
2016
Watercolor and eye shadow on roofing paper
44"x40"
In The Backspace
Sleep Study
Nola Avienne
September 07 – 30, 2017
Reception / Thursday, September 07, 6–8pm
Continually engaged with scientific themes, Nola Avienne’s latest work addresses the unconscious mind in a series of large-scale watercolors and a magnetic installation extrapolated from MRI imagery of the artist’s brain.
The brain is as active in sleep as it is awake. But when we sleep, we are paralyzed and do not remember where we have been or what we have done. How can we map this?
Rather than focusing on biochemical explanations, I choose to examine the interior world that resides in our unconscious. I look to map those points in sleep where we are active in a deep, hidden place. Where we live a separate life. The light in night, the shimmer and sparkle, shows the dream.
Tarpaper is heavy, like the weight behind your eyes; eyeshadow the ephemera looking behind at all that has ever happened to you; the sparkle – every possibility, in every direction. The possibility to change the past, create the future, to revel in the now. Behind your eyes you can see. Now open them.