This body of work can be read as palimpsests, through which I appropriate material from the past, create new meanings and produce new content relevant to the present. I explore the connection between time and change: the relative nature of time and the relentlessness of change. This is the underlying rhythm to our everyday existence. In my work I attempt to record my own rhythm.
I come from a culture where scrolls play an important part in recording stories, history, and religion. In this body of work, I use the piano rolls as scrolls to create a visual dialogue with what is already there and also create work using them as points of departure to create my own content. I find myself drawn to piano rolls, not only because of their mysterious capacity to make music, but also their beauty as art objects. They are inseparable from temporality, rhythm, narrative, and the scroll. While experiencing my work, the viewer is forced to either walk through the installation or scroll through the boxes. Whether it is a long work installed on the wall or a long scroll rolled up in a box, the viewer is invited to spend time and engage with the work.
Today, piano rolls are ephemera and relics of a cultural history. Their lyrics are inspired by universal human emotions: love, loss, happiness, and tragedy, and form connections from the past to the present. I explore the relationship between music and visual media and how it might be possible to achieve the same underlying qualities of temporality and rhythm of music in two-dimensional artwork. With this in mind, I incise, juxtapose, cut, paste, print, inscribe, burn, sew, stencil, draw, and paint them in order to weave new meanings and create new narratives.
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