KAMILIA KARD
Kamilia Kard, with the work Sometimes I Feel Like That Inside of Me, is the third artist selected for Digital Video Wall. Her work will be shown in loop on the Metronom media wall, until the end of January 2019.
Sometimes I Feel Like That Inside of Me is a short video about the conflicting relationship between outer and inner space, reality and imagination, body and soul, apparent calm and emotional turmoil. The work continues with an investigation into the use of 3D modeling and animation for the construction of mental scenarios, in which dreams and memories intertwine with an exploration of imagination and female body.
> Metronom: In your work you combine the typical aesthetic of the web, as fluorescent colors of animations and digital graphics, with a lot of iconographic references that belong instead to the history of art. What role does this contamination have in your research?
Kamilia: Very often when I realize a work I translate attitudes, feelings and thoughts into form. Formal research is very important in the practice of my work and I try to use the languages I have without limits. I like to create both new imaginaries made entirely by myself and contaminated with works from the past. To mention one, the work exhibited at Rome Quadriennale in 2016, My love is so religious / the three graces where the dormant Mars, the Venus and the ironic smile of Botticelli become texture of a 3D panel placed at the center of the great press. My love is so religious / the three graces explores the theme of love for couples, its relationship with gossip and how new forms of online communication convey rumors effect more quickly. In this perspective, the painting Venere e Marte is the key for a symbolic reading of work’s concept, since Botticelli’s painting ironically and metaphorically recounts the adultery of Simonetta Vespucci and Giuliano de Medici (see Marco Paoli, Venus and Mars) Parody of an adultery in Florence by Lorenzo il Magnifico, Edizioni ETS). The elements around the panel with the Botticellian texture, digitally realized, represent the noise, the disappointments and the inconveniences resulting from a sentimental relationship.
Another example is Free Falling Bosch (www.freefallingbosch.org), in which I use the figures taken from the hell in the triptych The Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch to dynamically represent a contemporary discomfort: the sense of vertigo produced by a world in a perennial race, from a sea of information used in a state of infinite scrolling, from an upright instability to a political, economic and social system. My references to the history of art and my iconographic research culturally support the concepts of my work creating a union between past and present, between traditional and new languages. My interest in a type of classical and “traditional” images, which I draw from the immense archive of the web, is almost always born of stories, memories and personal fantasies.
> M: You Define “Sometimes I Feel Like That Inside of Me”, the work selected for Digital Video Wall, “a short video on the often conflicting relationship between outer space and inner space, reality and imagination, body and soul, apparent calm and emotional tumult.” Revealing the complexity of the inner world, using the most aseptic aesthetics of 3D modeling: could you better explain this aspect of your work?
K: Compositions made with 3D modeling software have the ability to be naturally surreal. Artificial lights, synthetic materials, exaggerated reflections on translucent surfaces are just some of the elements that contribute to giving this medium an ideal aesthetic to represent emotional states or dream stages. The freedom of action that a person has within 3D scenarios goes beyond the boundaries imposed by the real world. For example, we have the power to cancel or alter the laws of physics, to draw environments with unreal proportions, to change the color of the sky, to create phosphorescent soils, to zoom in and out objects, people, animals at will, to make the body dance, headless woman, hands and feet and much more. Subjectivity combined with the experience of each one of us emerges from the choice of these combinations, whether they are made for play or for work. For example in My love is so Religious – Rainbow dream, I worked on a journey through icebergs, volcanic steppes, waterfalls and geysers, but also on introspective sensations and gazes, and on the relationship between real life and virtual dimension. Travel memories translate into unreal 3D surfaces texturized with photographs taken in Iceland and digitally manipulated. This new synthetic landscape becomes the scenario in which voluptuous women without legs, arms and heads find their place naturally.
Sometimes I Feel Like That Inside of Me continues my investigation of the use of 3D modeling and animation for the construction of mind scenarios, in which emotions and memories intertwine with an exploration of the imaginary. As in dreams, when shreds of images, experiences and sensations that we have not been able to store and catalog in our daily memory and aesthetics, try to find a place in our unconscious by distorted perception of reality.
> M: To represent the female body, you do not use images, which can be considered typical of the Internet scenario, linked to physical perfection, but Paleolithic Venuses, whose imperfect bodies are the opposite of the idealization we see daily. How does this choice affect the general meaning of the work?
K: My digital venus comes from a research on a possible future archeology (future archeology). Assuming a future in which our digital society collapsed and it might be necessary to reboot all the digital information stored in the various data centers, what would remain and what would be lost? What findings could emerge in those huge archives? My study about voluptuous and soft woman’s body arises from the union between a Paleolithic past and an imaginary future in which the sacred representation of the feminine body – like Willendorf’s Venus – is re-proposed as archetype of a hypothetical past filed online.
In my work Untitled, exhibited this autumn in Rome on the occasion of Digitalive – Roma Europa Festival, I created an immersive VR environment, in which the viewer was inside a small desolate and completely white surface (like the data centers) where a series of feminine torsos with soft curves stood as an ancient sculptures, some of which were worn or torn as digital ruins. Outside the virtual environment, the sculpture of a white digital Venus printed in 3D, in low resolution, showed imperfections similar to those of the virtual environment, caused by defective printing layers. The layering of a 3D print presents a visible artifact that makes it already accompanied by a story or decipherable period that can be immediately seen; like the rings of tree trunks or the layers of the earth’s crust.
> M: Your work is an example of how aesthetics and references to Internet world, often considered ephemeral and lacking in content, are instead an important critical tool. Do you think there can be a future for digital towards a greater awareness of the potential of your language?
K: I think there is a present in which the potentials of digital language are already widely recognized and used. The Internet world will perhaps be ephemeral, but it is certainly not without content, indeed: it is a world of boiling contents, of imaginations in continuous metamorphosis, of evolving ideas, of mutating languages, of dangerous relationships between individuals, codes and cars.
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Kamilia Kard (1981) is an artist, curator and lecturer born in Milan. After obtaining a degree in Political Economy (CLEP) at the Bocconi University in Milan, she moved to artistic studies obtaining a three-year diploma in Painting and a Degree in Net Art from Brera Academy of Fine Arts in Milan. She is currently a PhD student in Digital Humanities at the University of Genoa. Her artistic research explores how hyper-connectivity and new forms of online communication have changed and influenced the perception of the human body, gestures, feelings and emotions. She has exhibited in various places including the most recent: Victoria and Albert Museum in London, EP7 Paris, IMAL in Brussels, Fotomuseum in Winterthur, La Triennale di Milano, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sao Paolo, Brazil, La Quadriennale di Roma, Hypersalon Miami and the Museo del 900 in Milan. She recently edited the Alpha Plus collection – Anthology of Digital Art (Editorial Vortex 2017). She teaches Multimedia Communication at the Accademia di Brera, digital modeling at the Carrara Academy and Multimedia Design at the IED in Milan.
Cover image: Kamilia Kard, Untitled, VR experience, 2018
22/12/2018