From IDSVA Faculty Denise Carvalho

Innerspacing the City explored the ambivalences of experiencing the city in the performative body, inhuman relations, and through language. Our perception of what we call “real” has gone a long way, from the Cartesian split between mind and body, overlooking the Kantian transcendental through reason, toward the phenomenological perception of space via the body in motion, taking a detour in the realization that all is constructed in language, to finally return to the subject in the collective body, a subject aiming at losing subjectivity by gaining collective consciousness. The question remains: Is what we call “real,” or its lack, merely symbolic and ideological? Or is the “real” the fragmentary, the particularized of the personal actions that allow us to dream with something beyond itself? The city is the focal point of exploration in the dialogue between reality and ideality. In the artist’s minds, the ideal city is still perceived as whole, abstract, and distant, beyond their ability to intervene directly with it. In their performative actions, the city is personalized, limited to their emotional and critical response to it.

Chelsea Art Museum, New York, NY

Nov 17 – Dec 20, 2011