Being ‘Nude’
EVA CARIDI
Eva Caridi is a new artist in the busy, competitive London art scene but she has managed to get noticed by her new show titled ‘Nude’, on show at the fantastically industrial Ambika space. The sculptor has been preparing her ambitious installation for almost five years and finally ready, she put on display a pop-up installation of not one but two monumental labyrinths supported by female sculptures, a video projection and a series of photographs. The opening of the 11th of January revealed an exquisite work of high quality and craftsmanship that combined with the total tonnage of the steel mazes (11 tons) turned heads and brought together over 300 people of the local and international art world.
The curator of the show, Francesca Nannini, describes the work as ‘a commentary on the human condition: it is our soul undressed of the superfluous and the ephemeral, of the constraints and structures imposed by society: our purest essence is revealed throughout this spiritual journey and time is deconstructed to give way to our innermost self’.
The installation stages a representation of time as a human condition. There are no dead ends, no illusions, but only constant walking ahead in one direction. The visitor proceeds through the corridor surrounded by iron walls, and sound flows from the labyrinth’s depths compelling one to continue the journey. The path culminates in the artwork’s core: a space in between walls that hosts a video installation depicting females in their three stages of life: girl, woman and elderly lady. During the course of our life we tend to lose connections with the child part of ourselves and memories are locked in the secret alleys of our soul.
The second room features a deconstructed labyrinth filled with nude human sculptures frozen in multiple body positions. The artist says that the plaster sculptures resemble the fragility of human nature when it comes up against the impenetrable iron walls of the labyrinth, which in this case symbolizes the world and reality that we live in. Caridi is intimately involved with her creations, and she tries to establish a bond with the public. Plaster and iron are the means to a sensorial experience and their molding quality makes into almost living beings that speak to us.
Caridi’s monumental interactive installation unwinds over a floor surface of around 14,000 square feet, and the walking distance is about 75 meters from the entrance to the central area. The walls are about 2.4 meters high, and the labyrinth uses about 11 tons of steel. It is made by S & W Limited, based in the Midlands, and took about five days to install.
For the artist, this is her biggest labyrinth yet and on this obsession she comments ‘The labyrinth is used as a symbol to represent a three-dimensional feeling, to concretise feelings. It forces you into a pilgrimage, a journey through time. People lose track of direction and of the outside world, ascending towards a personal state of mind. Despite feeling confused and lost, one finds the way to the end which is, in fact, just the beginning.’
Xanthi Skoulariki
Posted on January 23, 2012 by Editors
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