The Eduardo Secci Gallery Project is pleased to present "#iipolar", a solo exhibit by Nora Renaud, curated by THE SWAN STATION – a cultural platform ideated by Luca Pozzi for the activation of counterintuitive experiences linked to phenomena of nonlocality, entanglement, quantum gravity and multidimensionality.
"I met Nora in the planet's greatest depression, between Jordan, Palestine and Israel, in the so- called rift valley, on the coast of the Dead Sea. She always walked with a small copper shard in one hand and a cellphone in the other. Two almost proportionate objects that looked like strange, complementary hyper technological devices. On one side, the copper, coarse, in some points oxidized and in others more polished, resembling a mirror, which was put on the same level of what was considered to be the most advanced smartphone at that time. In the right hand, the age of the copper (at least five thousand years B.C.), and in the left hand, a toy from the fourth industrial revolution based on the digital innovation of the experiential multiplication and delocalization processes of everything, of forever and of everywhere. In camera mode, she pointed the shard and kept shooting pictures using the material as an analog filter, creating a narration of her experience, which was subjectively bound to her presence in time and space, as well as to the independent properties of an ever-changing and ever-renewing material, in constant transformation, in explicit antagonism with the unvarying, reliable and infinite filters of Instagram." "#iipolar" stems from such assumptions and increases deviations in terms of symbolic complexity and cultural, ethnographic and historic references, mixing and interconnecting in such a way that fades away its borders, albeit respecting the contrasts. The epicenter is the bipolarism, a behavioral disorder of split personality and rapid mood changes characterized by transitions of extenuating phases, with quasi-immediate shifts from states of euphoria to somber depression. In Nora Renaud's research, all this translates into a relational network, bursted between the widespread inclination for mass sharing through the Internet and the progressive condition of individual domestic alienation. Born in Geneva, amidst the stifling Swiss bureaucracy oriented towards hyper legislative organization, and then teleported to Bogota, in the pulsing heart of Colombian chaos. From Panama to Venezuela, Mexico, Brazil and Ecuador, Nora takes over contemporary contradictions and converts them into a linguistic factor, blending art, fashion and performance.
Through the creation of artisan artifacts, digital postproductions and actual collaborative actions shared through social networks, her works sensitize the public opinion on matters such as the safeguard of ethnic minorities and the protection of the environment, combining moral matters to artistic motives and choices.
In this specific case, Swan Station welcomes DIAGNOSISCARNAVAL within the unprecedented project "#iipolar", a promotional process of the end of the Internet, triggered by the activation of two characters, two masks, who pose and take selfies in highly contrasting and stereotyped places. The exhibit will feature the dressing Kit, consisting of: a bronze amulet decorated with emeralds; a thatched scepter, handmade by rural communities; stickers with graphic symbols; synthetic furs; and two rough, wooden masks carved in Colombia by the artist herself. It is important to underline that these faces simultaneously represent the symbol (positive and negative smiles) chosen by Wikipedia – the shared portal of global knowledge – to illustrate the bipolar disorder, as well as the default avatar provided by Facebook to those users that choose not to upload a profile image. Two habitable "Sculptures", complementary and realizable by all, installed in penumbra, through a Parisian ethnographic museum display in Quai Branly style, exhibited as if they were relics from a future past, dramatically familiar, material counterparts, conservative and traditional of a parallel narration, oneiric and digital, to be actively followed on the artist's Instagram account with a coherent bipolar attitude: norarenaud_hyperanalogist #iipolar #diagnocrazia.