SAUDADE

Installation of kinetic sculptures, video and sound
Tobačna 001 Cultural Centre­, Ljubljana

In the exhibition, the artist delves into a specific emotional state that the Portuguese, a nation of seafarers and musicians, call saudade.

It describes profound longing for something and correlates with the here better known word sevdah. The mixture of emotions is associated with events and experiences that once brought happiness and now resonate with happiness and hope to relive or feel something again, despite knowing that what is being longed for might never return. Saudade encompasses a unique form of yearning for something other than the present, looking back at the past and turning towards the future. The emphasized temporal component, in its continuous fusion with sound, pervades the entire installation: the clock mechanism, otherwise a relevant time-measuring tool, is transformed into a musical instrument which further loosens our relativized awareness of time. The temporal dimension is further thematised by the video of a mother and daughter struggling on a hovering chair to find the uncertain balance in life. In the video, using her recollections to find alternative forms of (co)existence, the artist connects with her loved ones.

Precisely measured intervals define the content, which is subject to time loops, as a repetitive state and a precisely measured possibility of the real. The resonant objects in their triangular shape hints at movement through the place-time dimension, while on the cognitive level it sublimates the desire to merge, the need to seek a common image, language, tone, and synchronized motion. At a certain frequency, they form patterns on water surface that are strongly reminiscent of sea waves. Above them is a swing, reminding us of the long-gone childhood, and its swinging motion symbolically alludes to the resonance between the past and the future. (Alenka Trebušak)