, 2023Burrow, 2023 was my graduation project and the largest set of prints I have ever made. The immersive installation consisted of three 600 x 240 cm panels of paper. Individual sheets were printed using a monotype technique I developed over the months preceding my graduation. I sewed into the sheets of paper and ran thel through the printmaking press over a large sheet of PVC lathered with ink. The unique pattern of the stitching left a ghost, a shadow in the ink itself and two or three virgin sheets were then printed with this same ink and pattern, creating lighter copies of the original sheet. The sheets were dried and sorted by pigmentation. I then sewed together the panels, including among tbe monotypes graphite drawings inspired
by the idea of human hibernation, chronophagy and oroborality. I created a hole in each panel through which the audience could make their way, to a final drawing created directly on a wall.
The goal was to create an environment, to fill a room with paper and have the visitor walk through it to experience the piece. I wanted to put into practice the idea of molding with and into one’s environment. There was a forward progression towards something darker, a literal intensity of the black of the ink nearing with each panel, but also a progression towards my own ideal, of a tighter cosmology, an ecology of being that brought living and nonliving things together in a new proximity.
Detail of first panel, view from the back. Oil based ink, cotton thread, graphite on patternmaking paper.
First panel, view from the front. Oil based ink, cotton thread, graphite on patternmaking paper.
Second panel, view from the front. Oil based ink, cotton thread, graphite on patternmaking paper.
Third panel, view from the front. Oil based ink, cotton thread, graphite on patternmaking paper.
Final drawing. Graphite on drywall.
Monotype detail, third panel. Oil based ink, cotton thread on patternmaking paper.
Detail from third panel and wall drawing. Oil based ink, cotton thread, graphite on patternmaking paper and graphite on drywall.
Detail from third panel. Oil based ink, cotton thread, graphite on patternmaking paper.
Monotype detail, first panel. Oil based ink, cotton thread on patternmaking paper.
Drawing detail, first panel. Graphite, cotton thread on patternmaking paper.
Detail from second panel. Oil based ink, cotton thread, graphite on patternmaking paper.
“In order to find alternative ways of life that allow all humans “enough food, water, adequate shelter and a cultural meaning in life,” we must still be capable of observation and imitation; we must still be able to learn and change, to behave in accordance with the resources of our vital surroundings.
Burrow invites you to imitate species that surrender the pace of their lives to the cycles of the earth, that sleep with the tree that December has frozen over. By digging alongside rather than against the soil, we can allow ourselves to re-define the boundaries with our swarming biomes. We can infuse the world with meaning and importance.”
Exhibition text, Burrow, 2023
Burrow invites you to imitate species that surrender the pace of their lives to the cycles of the earth, that sleep with the tree that December has frozen over. By digging alongside rather than against the soil, we can allow ourselves to re-define the boundaries with our swarming biomes. We can infuse the world with meaning and importance.”
Exhibition text, Burrow, 2023
Detail from third panel. Graphite, cotton thread on patternmaking paper.
The installation is a translation of a poem written several years ago. In the exhibition itself, it is provided to the visitor in the written form through a folded flyer. Here is said poem.
to lie to disappear
to let the skin sinking my eyes pull me
down and inside out
to break my fingers so they can mold with the damp bark.
to let my bones fill with little crawlers.
to be a home.
to wait in silence in the moist body, not
warding off the maggots or the fleas
to watch the world die slowly and to drink,
from the hollow depths, the yellow sap
to feed on the pearls of energy leaving the tiny
corpses around me
to stand still as these sparks slide on my tongue.
They illuminate my face briefly one after
the other as winter arrives
And my lips, barely discernible from the
coarse trunk, become blue.
to sleep with the tree that December
has frozen over
to clench my fists once, when my toes
have all rotten and fallen out.
Then to wait for the first scratch on the
last bits of my cheeks, the last chunks of my shoulders.
to greet the renewed gnawing like the
first summer rains.
to remember that there are days
and minutes
and hours.
to lie to disappear
to let the skin sinking my eyes pull me
down and inside out
to break my fingers so they can mold with the damp bark.
to let my bones fill with little crawlers.
to be a home.
to wait in silence in the moist body, not
warding off the maggots or the fleas
to watch the world die slowly and to drink,
from the hollow depths, the yellow sap
to feed on the pearls of energy leaving the tiny
corpses around me
to stand still as these sparks slide on my tongue.
They illuminate my face briefly one after
the other as winter arrives
And my lips, barely discernible from the
coarse trunk, become blue.
to sleep with the tree that December
has frozen over
to clench my fists once, when my toes
have all rotten and fallen out.
Then to wait for the first scratch on the
last bits of my cheeks, the last chunks of my shoulders.
to greet the renewed gnawing like the
first summer rains.
to remember that there are days
and minutes
and hours.
Detail of second and third panels. Oil based ink, cotton thread, graphite on patternmaking paper.
Documentation by Andrea Lombardi & Aaryan Sinha.