2014 Exhibition
22. Egress
“Situated Cinema” is a genre of intimate image theaters utilizing the interplay between projected animations, everyday objects, and the resultant shadows to frame stories about surviving confinement. Individuals whose lives inspire these works include hostages, prisoners, slaves, victims of relocation camps, and women living under a repressive government. All have transcended the absurd by devising a creative survival strategy that necessitates careful navigation between powerlessness and regeneration. Part shadow play, part documentary, part optical illusion, “situated cinema” uses visual storytelling to poetically frame political and historical events.
In Egress, women stifled under an authoritarian regime reclaim self-determination by reading banned books to create their own reality from books’ — and even pages’ — physicality. Inspired by Azar Nafisi’s memoir, “Reading Lolita in Tehran.”
Special thanks to the Detroit Artists Market for their support of this project.
Artist Talk Saturday 6pm at Detroit Artists Market, 4719 Woodward Ave, Detroit, MI 48201
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Artist Information
Heidi Kumao
Heidi Kumao is a media artist who creates video installations, animated video shorts and kinetic sculpture. She has exhibited her work in solo and group exhibitions in the USA and internationally.
Kumao uses a range of technologies to highlight our behavior within, and perceptions of, institutionalized power structures. The work is often theatrical or performative, and the subjects she has explored include: traditional gender roles, mass media, and the educational and prison systems. These works have ranged in media and include: a hacked, interactive CNN broadcast, wearable electronics (women’s clothing that responds to its wearer’s environment), mechanical girl’s legs that “misbehave,” surreal stop motion animations, and video sculptures. Currently, she is working on a series of video installations that combine shadow play, documentary, and optical illusion to poetically frame political and historical stories about surviving extreme confinement.
www.heidikumao.net