Elonda Billera: pulling mussels from the shell (Jan 23rd 7-10pm)

Exhibitions

Elonda Billera
pulling mussels from the shell
January 23, 2010
7-10 pm

Through February 4th

In pulling mussels from the shell, Elonda Billera proposes to open up containers that we use to insulate, hold and store against the void.

“How can we live without our lives? How will we know it’s us without our past? No. Leave it. Burn it.”
-The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck

By upending and cutting open a chest of drawers, the object can no longer contain, but becomes an archway to walk through. No longer a threshold of how much we can take, but rather a fulcrum of how much we can cut open and expose the structure. Ready to build more. Thinking this way, somehow decisions and causes are distorted. Appearing to come after effects- like the world is in reverse. If even just one object can be flipped, stopped- like reversing the direction of the rotating blades of a ceiling fan by relaxing your eyes- can we change what is written?

As an attempt to defy gravity, defy duration and therefore hopefully defy consequence, Billera asks us to walk through our past into a future rather than hold on so tight to the relics of what was to be. Instead of continually filling to capacity, limit can become liminal. Moving towards one another, can we unfix our choices? Turn access inside out. Make assumptions mobile. Together, carry a closed set into potential.