Nance Davies ::: Artist’s Statement                                    

I am an interdisciplinary and mixed media artist. My work explores the condition of empathy and inter-relationship and interdependence of all life forms. I map the spaces where public and private experiences collide – by constructing a matrix of surreal juxtaposition through the poetics of hybrid imagery. I do this by allowing my senses, intellect and intuition to flow freely and create new fusions. I am especially drawn to the spaces where site, audience and the process of making intersect.

Currently my work explores the concept and structure of the musical form ‘fugue’ – a polyphonic musical composition based upon multiple themes, enunciated by several voices in turn. Fugue is also a term used in psychiatry to describe a period during which a person suffers inexplicable memory loss. Through these lenses I explore the condition of contemporary consciousness and identity – as it maneuvers, morphs, and sometimes forgets itself in our constantly shifting and unstable world. This phenomenon intensifies at the interface between our private and public lives – now located at the digital screen through which we slip back and forth – shedding the body for virtual echoes in repeating cycles. Authentic encounters recede as the performance becomes increasingly isolated, superficial and hollow. I question: who performs? who witnesses? what is lost when we lose the wisdom of the contingent body-mind? how does the music of the universe become the noise in the ‘airlock’?

My work occurs across this complex terrain – geographical place, virtual space, psychological space, and the movement in-between. My original media – painting and drawing – influence my voice in video (moving image) development. Currently – media includes both tactile and virtual / electronic material [video, sound, and light]. Contexts are installation space (art venues) and moving spaces (i.e. subway trains and stations), online moving-image sites, and large public projections spaces. The interstitial influences both my conceptual concerns and my formal decisions.

My current project: Fugue – is composed of several short experimental video-sound pieces –  exhibited as screen projections, on monitor and in multiples as installation.