The Unfurling
Sat 03 Dec 2022 – Ongoing
Forming part of the Make Visible: Taranaki project, this collaborative work is a window-based intervention in the Len Lye Centre that makes visible different spectrums via the lenses of identity and gender. The Unfurling comprises two distinct yet spiritually connected window works by Novak and Clothier.
Ink on transparent vinyl
Picking up from where Novak’s exhibition at the Govett-Brewster Sub Rosa left off in 2019 - the restroom decals edited by the artist that still exist today (titled ) - A Warm Embrace rethinks space to welcome and make visible all rainbow communities. It reframes, remixes, and extends the language in Sub Rosa (Outro) based on LGBTQI+ research done since 2019.
About the Artist: Shannon Novak (Tararā) works to reduce anxiety, depression, and suicide rates for LGBTQI+ communities worldwide, through dismantling heteronormative structures and systems and building spaces that acknowledge, celebrate, and support diversity and inclusion in sexual orientation, romantic orientation, gender identities, gender expressions, and sex characteristics. This manifests as socially engaged and collaborative painting, photography, installation, sculpture, and curatorial practice that moves through and beyond traditional exhibition spaces. The work explores light and dark in the past, present and future, but ultimately seeks to grow hope for a better world where LGBTQI+ communities can live without fear.
Pasha Clothier, Kāhili, 2022.
Ink on transparent vinyl
Kāhili is Hawaiian for a standing rainbow - this work can be read as a standing rainbow bridge, created with openness to diverse ages, ethnicities, genders and identities. It also engages with whakapapa, and the nature of light.
About the Artist: Pasha Clothier is a collaborator bringing about dimensional change across borders of culture, environment and knowledge, now working with millennia-old imagery mixed with whakapapa and innovation. Acknowledging leadership in Polynesian and Indigenous practices around the universe and environment has led to revising the history of knowledge, the aim of a radical enrichment of humanity's relationship to environment and all species is targeted at resolving the climate crisis. This is accompanied by imagery that does not necessarily require rationality or logic to access and understand. In Clothier's universe, a unity of feminine and masculine occurs on a trajectory to the essential.
Make Visible: Taranaki is an ongoing, community led project developed by artist, curator and activist Shannon Novak, with the aim of growing support for LGBTQI+ communities worldwide by making visible challenges and triumphs for these communities.
You can find the full Make Visible: Taranaki project documentation on Shannon's website here.