Kindred Spirits

It’s early evening. Spectators are trickling into the Despacio art center, drawn by the promise of an experience they will hear in silence and see with other eyes. Tonight, in meditation, they will share something special. What that is, however, we just might never know.

Thoughts

Thoughts

In the entryway, a small screen transmitting footage from a security camera hints at the evening’s inner workings: Five artists and a curator, gathered one floor down in the same building, are dreaming up an exhibition. Once the spectators reach the gallery space, they find themselves in an empty room. A set of cushions on the floor, arranged like those on the screen, invite them to sit down and join the meditation session taking place below them.

What happens when an exhibition is left entirely to our imaginations?

It’s no secret that art can exist without a canvas. Conceptual art is an old story, told and retold for years: Art is an idea, and this idea exists independently of its representation.

But what if we were to find new ways of telling this story, ways that didn’t limit themselves to verbal or visual forms of communication? Maybe, instead of simply consuming works of art, spectators could take part in the very work that gives them life.

This is the story Kindred Spirits tells. With the meditation session far enough to be intangible but close enough to spark something in our imaginations, a new kind of artistic experience can take place. Spectators are invited to focus the mind for a period of time and create space within themselves for feeling, intuition, and art to blossom.

What emerges from this evening will be both collective and deeply personal: the result of introspection that can only be nurtured by a surrounding group engaging in the same. Everything will depend on how we let our inner voices guide us through the vast possibilities of immaterial art.

Information

Information

The happening Kindred Spirits will take place on Wednesday, February 28th from 7:30 to 8:30pm at Despacio.

Participating artists: Federico Herrero, Diana Abi Khalil, Carlos Fernández, Pamela Hernández and Sergio Rojas Chaves. Curated by Sandino Scheidegger.