Review: “a spellbinding meditation”
As she sat in the Triton Museum’s digital gallery, Oana Marcu shares her experience visiting “- futility in three acts -”
still from the video “-futility in three acts -” (Act 1)
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It has been a while since I have been truly moved by art; but sitting in front of the slowly moving glass fragments of Sieglinde's "futility in three acts" I am finding myself in a spellbinding meditation in which I recognize my own heart, my own life, my own re-imagining.
The beginning of Act 1 starts with an end: broken shards of a chapter of life get cleaned up, sorted into piles, while more pieces fly in from memories past and maybe recent, tiny and larger.
In Act 2, shattered pieces get carefully rebuilt on top of each other. A new structure forms at the center, and I see a heart flower slowly growing from colorful memories still alive, coming back together; pillars of broken bottlenecks create a supportive scaffold that tries to keep the newly imagined heart together. Perhaps a metaphor for the bottlenecks of life, old thoughts or memories that now limit our own expansion.
May all be too much for a growing heart to keep it all together and stable? Smaller fragments start piling in at random, spilling out to the outside, like a heart that wants to speak its pain and truth, yet still whole at the center.
Not a sustainable structure, but a tempo in the rhythm of life, with seasons of growth and destruction and rebuilding.
Act 3 is gentler; broken memories have lost their color, and it is their contour that rebuilds the rose of the heart, led by an invisible hand. Larger pieces hold with care, nurturing the smaller fragments, and beautiful outlines of petals start growing out. A stem appears to support the new flower, the new act, the new re-imagined life.
At one point, bottle openings at the front resemble inner eyes, as if peering from inside out, to show the world the new growth. The eyes of wisdom that recognize the strength of building from inside, rather than at the whim of life.
still from the video “-futility in three acts -” (Act 2)
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It is named "- futility in three acts -", yet to me there is nothing futile about it: it is real life in action, a heart that learns to experience, break apart, reconstruct, forgive, forget; it is the chiseling of our life chapters, from chaos to images and experiences that are clearer, simpler, informed by the past. It is the brokenness that creates beauty, the shards that create soft flowers, the experiences of the old chapters that create the pillars for the new acts.
And one is left inspired to experience, to remember to not be afraid to break apart and re-imagine, and to be looking forward to the next chapters of life, more acts.
It comes from an artist who must have depth and experience, a soul who learned the wisdom to allow the shards to flow - a lesson I have yet to learn; yet learning and healing is already happening, simply by watching the lesson she teaches, perhaps unknowingly but patiently, organically, across time and culture.
~ Oana Marcu
(shared with permission)
still from the video “-futility in three acts -” (Act 3)
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