Eila Douglas/Vinwynn

Residency Programs: June 2015

June

Land of the Blind
Installation and documentation over drifts
The residency in centro Negra is for Eila a way to be in a space which is unfamiliar, both geographically and linguistically, and to have a place where time stretches to think deeply about how we create art work.
She is particularly interested in emphasising on the slowness, the idea of the conception of time in the rural versus urban. Her research has to do with limits – of language, of the subject (masculine/feminine) of art.

Eila tries to understand this new environment without the help of the language, to endow it with meaning by the senses. The walks in silent evidence that every message entails layer of meaning which our understanding cannot reach. Our “being in the world” achieves only small approaches to the reality, always far from the understanding of totality.
In one of her roams, Douglas finds a textual message in her own language which describes what she is feeling, a poem on a wall of a poultry yard.

“In time we forsake all illusion
And yield to the passing of time
Lets drink from the cup of confusion
And be Queen in the land of the blind’.
(Variation of a poem by Selu Herraiz)

“Con el tiempo abandonamos toda ilusión
Y cedemos ante el paso del tiempo
Vamos a beber de la copa de la confusión
a ser reina en el país de los ciegos ‘.
(Variaciones de un poema Selu Herraiz)

The installation is the transcription of this poem in braille, using natural materials. This way she exposes the viewer to the difficulty of the immediate understanding, instigating them to be leaded by the senses: perceive a visual composition, feel through the touch, shows us the diverse ways we can approach to one reality.

July

The minus project
Action (18 days)
I was busy sunbathing. Thought I’d come in and see what everyone’s been up to and holy shit what a mess! Notwithstanding my eyes had to adjust to the darkness, when they did it was worse than I thought. Gesture, it’s all about the gesture, right? There’s nothing I can add ­to, do or say in this stream of lack-of-consciousness going on; this tit­bit mayhem of unco­ordinated choreography of thinking. There’s not a thing I can make, add, say… there is a gesture I can make, a doing which is undoing. That’s all. Undo.