Riposo

This art work was made in collaboration with Lena Chen for her V-Air Residency and with support of MUST- Museo del Territorio Vimercatese. This residency was created with the theme "DIALOGUES WITH CATASTROPHE. Reflections, practices, and visions for rebirth." Artists were invited to reflect on strategies and imaginaries related to how to emerge from the catastrophe, build the tools to respond, and imagine a possible rebirth. Riposo is the Italian word for rest and it invited local inhabitants to do so as an antidote to the ever present pressures, responsibilities and general anxiety tied to contemporary life and hyper-productivity. Lena also staged a restful performance in the hammock at the conclusion of her residency. Riposo is a site-specific Hammock installation at the Piazza Roma in Vimercate. The hammock is designed with a fabric that features the Piazza Roma digitally manipulated into a surreal dreamscape. Lena photo documented the public square in which the Riposo performance would take place. I collage the documentation together using techniques I've developed from my Desert Traveler collage series in 2015. I stitched the imagery in to a dreamlike landscape and we had it printed on to a hammock. I've always loved hammocks, I slept on one in the beach town of Playas Negras, El Salvador. I stumbled into every night one in on the beach and slept like a baby.