Ira Eduardovna | A Thousand Years
Solo exhibition at 1708 gallery, Richmond, VA
curator: Emily Smith
Description:
One narrative shifts to two parallel narratives and then to three parallel narratives, while examining tropes of representation of the human existence, familial structures and the notion of tragedy.
The video piece begins with a narrative of a sitcom scene: a couple is watching TV, discussing the content of a tragedy that they’re watching. Their dialogue and timeline is progressing backwards and then loops forward – as a palindrome. They repeat the same lines, but slowly exchange their roles.
A neighbor comes in and out of their apartment constantly trying to change the narrative to a familiar, linear comic structure. After few minutes two out of three channels zoom out and discover a choir of eight people that is facing the sitcom actors. The choir is singing an apocalyptic, existential text in Hebrew – functioning as a chorus of a Greek play. (The text is a prologue from a book by A.B.Yehoshua “Journey to the end of the millennium”). The narrative of the sitcom and the narrative of the choir continue to exist in parallel, as the third channel slowly focuses on the conductor of the choir who abruptly leaves the set. The camera follows her to her dressing room, discovering a third, intimate narrative of the character. The piece goes through variations of representation, the genres change as well as the main characters, constantly zooming out and pulling back to show the bigger picture – yet remaining trapped in the cinematic frame.
