Filo Sofi Arts presents, Doubled Up in Your Image, an immersive, interactive video sculpture installation by KS Brewer. The artist invites participants to enter a post-traumatic impression of a bedroom, composed of sculptures, videos, paintings, sounds, and scents that manifest the insidious effects of internalized traumas into an encompassing experience.
Visual and sonic echoes reverberate throughout the installation. Distorted reflections, echoing soundscapes, and the overall symmetry of the room create a mirror image of reality, conflating what is real and unreal. Situated halfway between a child’s room and an adult’s, this disorienting space haunts its inhabitants with oversized furniture, unnerving sounds, and toxic light. Explosive burn marks emanate from the bed in the installation’s center. A blackened crater within the mattress allows patrons to disappear into the bed’s structure and find sanctuary in the cave-like space within it. A video installation and soundscape accompany participants within this intimate space, allowing them to be alone yet simultaneously supported by its uplifting audio-visual elements.
In her depiction of a bedroom positioned beyond the constraints of reality, Brewer conjures the spirit of the room’s inhabitant. Her dissociated presence is communicated through flickering lights, warped reflections, and the caustic burn marks that scar the room - the incendiary results of her inner turmoil. Combining her mother’s personal history with her grandmother’s cello music and great-grandmother’s quilt, Brewer recognizes that each has traumas to relate, and uses them to inform the installation’s characterization of the room’s female protagonist as a voiceless, invisible spirit. Unseen and unheard, this ghost bears a resemblance not only to the experiences of the women, but to the experiences of many people discriminated against, marginalized, or abused because of their identities. The installation’s oppressive atmosphere serves to reaffirm the impact of these traumas, whether they are experienced personally, historically, or socially. The cave-like sanctuary within acknowledges the need for support to facilitate healing. Contemporary culture often encourages negative emotions and incidents to be kept in the recesses of the mind. Doubled Up in Your Image resists this suggestion by externalizing these discomfiting sensations in an immersive environment so that they may be acknowledged, validated, and eventually exorcised.
Doubled Up in Your Image, curated by Gabrielle Aruta, opened September 21st from 7-10pm and was on view through October 21st.