REENCOUNTERS

Lit & Luz Festival, Chicago

2023

The same line that traces a route across the globe –let's imagine one made at our scale, that we could embrace entirely in our gaze, the exact span of our open arms– becomes leaves, stems, roots, serpentine rays of sun moving along the window –identical sun here and there– growing lighter, darker, lighter, darker. Light and shadow are the same principle. The long stroke –the hand, the earth, the black ink– retracing itself to erase any points of departure or end encircles a small mound where life withers, is re-greened, palpitates, everything happens at its own pace. They’re fragments of a collection that’s not material, but made of time, like a seed or a stone.

An exposed root finds a way –one of the many possible– in its contact with another. In that vulnerability they’re sustained and expanded. They then knot themselves together until it’s impossible to tell one root from the other. A portrait, according to one definition, is the image of a person drawn from the physical features presented by someone who knows them or has seen them.

Where does the body of the hand that draws begin? Whose is the body outside the body? Whose is the silhouette?

Text: Mariana Oliver

Curation: Esteban King and Nicky Ni

Photos: Clare Britt and Lisa Korpan

REENCOUNTERS Lit & Luz Festival