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(C) 2015 Ivana Miloš and Christoph Perl. Photograph: Solmaz Farhang

A Wolf and a Bird

Ivana Miloš and Christoph Perl
2015
Installation

Where epistemology meets a flower, here is what it becomes:

A rose is a rose is a rose

Despite all persuasions, a rose knows nothing of being a rose. We can look at its roots, leaves and petals, write descriptions of its colours, hues and curves, draw it and take pictures of it, and at the end of all our efforts its scent will remain as elusive as it ever was.

I: Glad, dumbfounded, and dissolved into quiet bliss.

We have undertaken to show our love to others, to uncover its nooks and crannies, to seek a portrayal, a narrative that can do justice to its hold on our beings. We attempt to allow for the imaginary threads of its scent to unveil before, through and inside the visitor. Trusting the words of Simone de Beauvoir, we speak: “It is impossible to shed light on one’s own life without at some point illuminating the lives of others.”

C: My eyes flashed, my heart rushed, it was me now, whom your words escaped. I don’t know what I wished for, if I did.

The wide discipline of love, traced out in the lines and hands of two explorers of old and new, embodies an all-encompassing wave covering a myriad of other realms, while simultaneously remaining a crevice they leave untouched or only brush against. It has to defend its uniqueness against the vast space the very same word takes up in the popular imaginary. In order to prove its universality, it produces images that put its iterability on the line.

I: I jumped, I shimmered, my heart leapt to my throat, and the rain came.

Once, there was a seed that managed to sprout, and it is this sprouting and nurturing into life that we seek to exhibit, starting from early words, designations and recognitions, heading through common undertakings, bringing into being a sharing, a true conversation. It cannot be expressed but in a dialogue of that all we’ve managed to create.

C: Now the waters don’t just caress me lightly passing by, they creep, around and down and in, they move me. It’s this permeability that makes me tremble. And it makes me hope and wish and dream.

Our tenor is crucially intertwined with growth: a love is a love through the care it receives and the fruits it brings to its participants as well as its surroundings. To represent a plant, we look at all the stages of its life; to represent a love, we look at the process of its becoming and staying. The material speaks in the language we’ve been learning to speak together, wishing for you to hear it call.

I: I’ve bared my strings. My cheeks are flushed. My dreams are aflutter. I am beholden to you.

Fact Box

A Wolf and a Bird
Categories
Date
May 26, 2015