one, no one and one hundred thousand

Presented at 

Wix Lounge, NYC

Edge Arts, Lisbon 

The work in this One, No One and One Hundred Thousand explores the multiplicity of the self, investigating the tension between change and sameness, identity and transience through a series of mixed media pieces and oil paintings. 

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I’m interested in the idea that we each are many – and that from moment to moment, we shift, split, merge, cooperate, compete or ignore ourselves. My home, my studio and my phone are covered in notes and reminders, an endless exercise in attempting to connect each moment to the next, or to the one that comes after that. The work is inspired by recent research on memory that mirrors this daily impression. I found that painting and transfers parallel the processes of memory making and recall. They work as lossy filters that selectively and randomly keep and lose information. They also modify and destroy their source as they build upon it, just as we string our memories or past selves together in a narrative, filling them with meaning and massaging them to fit our mood and circumstance. The title comes from Luigi Pirandello's novel with the same name (thank you, Felisa!).



Download show catalog (pdf) or scroll down to see all pieces.

The filmstrip concept echoes Edward Muybridge's studies of human and animal motion. I'm interested in the "break" moments, moments where we remember, we look back, or try to hang on to the past or to the future...

I think most people feel this plurality to some degree. Sometimes in trivial incongruencies, like the determination we feel about getting healthy and working out that vaporizes the next minute where, oh yes, we will have that desert because it's a special day. A special me. But I think each of us deals with more fundamental discontinuities about themselves too.

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Joana Ricou, copyright 2013