DAMOCLES, 2019 – ongoing textile works, stones, sculptures. The use of ‘Damocles’ has guided my ruminations on why human choose to be foul towards each other, and serves as a meditation on ways we can cherish and nurture our friendships with full responsibility, meaning without pointing fingers towards systems, power, or war. All of these works have been collected or traded.
Fibers can wear out due to varying factors, while others grow tighter or smoother over time. Vulnerable to tension or cutting, the stone entities rely on the fiber (and maintenance) to remain intact. Damocles project began after moving to Norway in 2015 with weighted blankets, extra-thick collared scarves for people who stick their necks out for others, caps, that developed into Veveri Co. and further during The Trélex Residency in February 2019. The practice continues to grow and develop with the ambition to fulfill Aesthetic Resonances merging technologies in textile manufacturing, geology, and design.
Seeing bonds and ties as willfully shared acts of holding our entropic universes together, I also find the practice tied to my lifelong love of two elements: water and stone, of which the latter is actually shown to be weaker than water. Stones have a rich history in and of themselves, being from the earth and of matter, their relationship to human beings started long before being wielded as tools, perhaps even as biological technology to create variants in life form in cooperation with water vibrating at different resonant emanations, informing cellular behavior.
Used for cultivating fields or warding off enemies, stones have also been used to punish and abuse. So while the shape of stones can connect with the images of cells or molecules, their applications for self-defense, survival, punishment invite our connection with them for consideration. For these and other complex associations with stones, they are used in this ongoing body of artworks created to look with curiosity at the nature of doubt, fear, dread, anxiety, ritual, impermanence.
Tied together by soft fibers, only knots and structural tension to hold knots and stones together. Tapestries can easily be undone through a great deal of labour. Creating proves as a more amicable energy exertion as corrections and destructions tend to make a mess. The colour choices of thread are often made with reference to the source of the stones or communion desired with the viewer. The site of the stones’ origins is important to the cognitive experience of the sculptures. Though pigments have dynamic and varied cultural associations, the pigments selected refers to the actual conditions the stones were sourced from, for example: plowed fields bound by brown thread, porous stones from streameds bound by blue, and road or horse trail stones bound by twine such as that used in basket weaving or leash making, red for the colour of blood exposed to air. The red thread an allegorical device for living with an open heart. Bound stones are suspended in air, wielding an experience foretold in The Sword of Damocles, where the experience of welding power comes with great pressure or anxiety. The bound stones suspended, or on pedestal, reference relationships of power in individual lives, such as friendships, marriages, and business contracts. That which binds separate entities are not these rituals or formality really, but invisible emanations that requires a depth of trust, and one in which we must remain ever so careful with. Contact: mariammanart@icloud.com
