BOXES AND CHIMERAS

The casket contains the things that are unforgettable, unforgettable for us but also unforgettable for those to whom we are going to give our treasures.
(Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space)

I love making things with my hands, including making objects out of photographs. I am also a little bit obsessed with boxes. They both hide and reveal. For CONTACT 2019 I made a set of four treasure boxes and a large leporello book. They are a sort of a love letter to Newfoundland. I always bring home from my travels various mementos: stones, driftwood sticks, pieces of lichen, shells, bird eggshells. I love their textures, patterns and decaying beauty. They are my tactile memories.

Chimeras / Praha x Toronto are 3-dimensional collages based on Italo Calvino's book Invisible Cities. In this fictional dialogue between Kublai Khan and Marco Polo, the emperor asks the traveller to describe the cities he has visited. Because the two men initially don't speak the same language, Marco Polo communicates using signs and objects, which the emperor has to interpret. While the descriptions of different cities are quite fantastical, they eventually lead to the description of Polo's own native city, Venice.

Perhaps we too, interpret the places we inhabit according to our own experiences and signs. I grew up in Prague and later moved to Toronto. These two cities, very unlike each other, create my internal dialogue about identity, community, language, and aesthetics. My work illustrates this duality by layering imprints of both cities as they are layered in my psyche.

Chimeras were prepared for Gallery 44 members group exhibition Visible and Invisible Cities curated by Jessica Thalmann and shown at Gallery 1313 in 2021.

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ATIA POKORNY

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