Eclipse (2021)

Single-channel black and white silent video

Edition of 1 + 1 AP

Eclipse is a silent vignette that enmeshes the complex ecologies of body and landscape in a chiaroscuric play of dark and light. In the work, the shifting textures of the performer’s body and its immediate surrounds are evocative of the titular celestial phenomena. The artist has constructed an environment that is activated through the introduction of a closed somatic spiral - the embryonic form of the performer’s body disrupting and dissolving into the surface terrain as it rotates about its axis, revealing more of itself as the space and the objects around it darken. This eclipse is performed at a glacial pace. The front of the performer’s body remains hidden from the viewer’s sight, rendering it genderless and occluding signifiers of its humanity. The camera assumes a top-down gaze, reminiscent of geo-mapping technology, satellite imagery and aerial photography. The work, as such, also addresses the rote abstraction and objectification of the body through surveillance technology, by treating the corporeal as topographical.

This work was first shown as part of only losers left alive (love songs for the end of the world), a group show curated by Louis Ho at Yeo Workshop Gillman Barracks over 10 - 31 July 2021.

• This NFT of a digital time lapse of the full length video functions as a certificate of ownership. Upon purchase, the buyer will receive hardware from XUE containing the actual video file.