Electrica Exhibition
Kryptonite, On display at the Cervantes Institute, (March, 2011) as part of the Electrica Exhibition is a multimedia installation project which investigates relations of power dynamics and desire through text, sculpture and video. Visual artist Itziar Barrio, and author Chavisa Woods, have collaborated to create a piece in which literary and visual media work in a symbiosis, generating a common iconography shared in the poetic text and visual exhibition. Kryptonite includes a video installation by Itziar Barrio, at the Cervantes Institute, and extends beyond the gallery venue and into the public sphere. A series of posters featuring three excerpts from the poem, Kryptonite, by Chavisa Woods, are on display at public venues around Manhattan throughout the month of March.
http://www.electricaproject.com/?page_id=4
Eléctrica is a series of exhibitions designed to produce interdisciplinary collaborations among artists and other professionals based in New York. This project is an ongoing platform for art practice that will evolve in diverse areas of the city.
The idea of energy generated by two opposing forces inspires this series. In each exhibition we will propose a series of collaborations revealing creative dynamics. This focus will highlight overlaps and will encourage cross-inspiration across various fields of knowledge.
Eléctrica is conceived as a continuous laboratory for creativity, discussion and experimentation. Emphasis is made on the creative process in which current issues, perspectives and the background of each participant might come into play or otherwise be revealed. The project is also seen as a space that will naturally support awareness of contemporary Spanish artists active in the New York art world.
In recent years, other exhibitions have featured the works of Spanish artists living and working in New York. Among them: New York Motion 1.0 (2008) at the Instituto Cervantes, Spain in The City (2009) at the Gabarrón Foundation and the video art and performance festival Spain Art Fest (2010). These projects proved to be successful initiatives, particularly as a means of presenting Spanish artists to the international public.
With these ideas as a foundation, Eléctrica works closely with locally based artists, of all nationalities, in order to situate their talent in the larger context of relationships with their potential colleagues, the general public, and the relevant cultural communities. In each exhibition the idea of collaboration will be expanded, nurturing co-curatorship and other means for professionals to determine the theme, selected artists, exhibition location and even the way artists will work in the specific space. While selected spaces will vary from local to Spanish institutions, each exhibition will be informed by its location.
Kryptonite
may you never realize you are as cold as this
eyes of expectant crystal cups unfilled
wanting as if wanting were all we knew to want
snowfall on bloomed petals
and blazing reflections
of sun on ice
sustenance deflected by unseen stratum
visible only at the sharpest angles
diamond blindness
you pass averting your gaze from our glare
may you never realize you are as cold as this
are we firewood?
are we fags?
covetous
stripped rags?
match stick, match girl
are we the stories you tell yourself to know you are safe?
the space that allows for wanting
wanting as if wanting were all we knew to want?
hot bodies tumbling in a frosted bell jar
unseen, irreproachable
time is at a standstill
each moment moves at survival’s pace
frozen in bestial eternity
breeding
poor breeding
poor
poverty is breeding
out like unbearable hoarfrost needles
stitching multiplicity to barren stone
even the air is breathless
emptiness solidifies
(I have watched) the clouds
turn to bones and grow heavy
dropping to the ground to be gnawed
by relentless dogs
this does not mean we are rising
like a dovelike
bone last leg eggshell ivory
feather pale,
green is the ColorOfFire
ascension of smoke
or maybe there is just a way grass has
of seeming to burn
beyond the barrier you keep
fortressed the flame in glass castles
filling open our open mouths, expectant crystal goblets
with numb
clinking cubes
of ice
your poverty is tasteless
and you offer it as a banquet
let us eat it easy as grass
burns
may you never realize
you are as cold
wanting as if wanting were all you knew to want
reaching as if always to be reaching
the substance of desire is immobile
fixed, immense, glacial
bearing down with the weight of birth
caught immortally in labor’s pain
pressing always
forward amassing exponential gravity
on its imperceptible journey
sculpting the visage of the world