Event 2: E. Joteva's MNEMOAWARI Solo Exhibition

The second event I attended was E. Joteva’s solo exhibition titled “Mnemoawari”. As I entered the exhibition, on top of the sounds of the other students in attendance was the magnified sound of water droplets over the speaker. The first piece of work I saw was a projection on the wall of a bright blue circle with lines cast outward, similar to a drawing of a sun. The edges of some of the lines had sparks of red or green. Joteva explained to me how what I was looking at was a dream-wave portrait (see image below). The image was a depiction of an individual’s gamma and theta brainwaves she captured when she asked the individual to recall their memories of their future dreams. The image was separate from the water droplets in the background, yet tied in with Joteva’s interest in human memory and direction of the past, present and future.

Dream-Wave Portrait

As I turned the corner, I discovered the correlation with the background sound to be three circular spheres, each hanging individually by a piece of rope. Each sculpture had been completely frozen and some were in the process of melting. Below each cryo sculpture was a basin that was collecting the dripping water, yet the water was colored due to the material Joteva used to create the different molds and layers of the sculptures. She used different flowers, including the colors blue, pink, and green, within each sphere as she is interested in how flower petals bleed into the water and how one can attempt to preserve it. The inspiration behind the sculptures came from a dream Joteva had, which I inferred sparked her interest in creating the dream-wave portrait.

One of the three sculptures hanging over a small basin
which is inside a larger container of sand.

The third part of the exhibition was the digital projections of the three spheres on the screen and the use of virtual reality goggles. When I put the VR goggles on, I was inside one of the spheres, examining the material the artist used to create the sculptures. However, the world I saw was continuously glitching to the sound in the background in order to symbolize the idea of escaping.

The three spheres depicted digitally on the screen

Joteva’s work was built around the process of how material changes over time. She played upon the idea of disappearance and the safeguards that society has put in place to protect everything from disappearing. For example, Joteva’s work preserves the color of the flowers by placing the basins below each sphere. As each sculpture melts, entropy rises and the material changes from what it used to be in the past (whole flowers) into the present moment (colored water).

My experience with Joteva’s artistic pieces and the conversation I had with her made me begin to think about our human desire to preserve. Whether it is a piece of art, a medal, a photo, a novel or some type of material, each of us has within us a little voice and feeling that makes us want to hold onto things. Usually it is because we associate significant events or meanings with certain objects, but Joteva’s exhibition showed how what we truly are doing is preserving memory. Certain objects and materials bring past memories into the present and through our dreams and aspirations, we have memories of our future that we want to attain. Joteva’s play on memory made me think about items I hold onto to ensure I do not forget past events or relationships, as well as how my memories of my future aspirations affect how I behave in the present.

Danielle (left) and I (right) at the event standing next to one of the three sculptures 

Although I enjoyed Joteva’s exhibition, had I been in her position, I would have made the VR experience more explicit as from a viewer’s perspective, it was hard to understand what exactly I was looking at and experiencing had I not asked the artist herself. Perhaps Joteva wanted the experience to not be as obvious though, leaving room for interpretation. Otherwise, I think she tied in all of her pieces extremely well, appealing to both humans’ hearing and visual senses.

I would recommend this exhibition to my classmates because it brought a new way of thinking about time and perspective, topics we discussed earlier in the quarter. We have learned about one-point perspective in regards to Brunelleschi, but Joteva’s work touches upon the variety of perspectives that can be derived from just 1 piece of work. For example, each individual ice sculpture was able to be perceived in its frozen, melted, and digitalized form, as well as what it looked like inside. Artists can thus use perspective in order to highlight the different ways of looking at and thinking about individual pieces of art.

Link to event: http://dma.ucla.edu/events/calendar/?ID=1007