You Were Here
Artist and Epicenter NYC co-founder Nitin Mukul makes immersive slow art experiences that encourages participants to momentarily disconnect from the spectacles of social media and the like, in order to sync with the meditative pace of durational painting. The process of creating a durational painting necessitates an engagement with the atmospheric conditions at the site of its production. These ambient improvisational paintings begin by layering paint in sheets of ice, freezing each layer so it accumulates layers of color and texture. The frozen form is placed outside on an easel and allowed to to melt according to natural weather conditions while it is filmed. Experiencing the resulting piece can be therapeutic, giving us a glimpse of elapsing geologic time. Viewers have space to build empathy with the forces at play in these pieces, and foster an almost animistic connection to them. We can identify with the material bodily quality of the metamorphing painting, its viscous glistening surface juxtaposed with and acted upon by the landscape and atmospheric conditions reveals that there is less separation between our human containers and the seemingly non-sentient matter around us than we might think. This is slow, ambient art that also functions as an empirical reflection of the site on which it is made: light, temperatures, time of day, location, and our climate at large. It can be seen as a new context for understanding abstract painting as a durational experience that is site specific, yet borderless.
You Were Here speaks to at-risk elements of our surroundings and society that have already or are gradually disappearing from view. I was reflecting on First Peoples, as well as recent incidents of disappeared and abducted members of our local community in the anti-immigration raids, and lost ones from the pandemic that this neighborhood was at the center of. In addition to the painted elements that have been the core of my durational painting technique, all footage was filmed in Jackson Heights. It opens with subway riders disappearing from view as they descend the stairs underground and later bumblebees pollinating by vibrating their bodies to shake pollen loose from flowers. These bees face extinction due to habitat loss, pesticides, and climate change. An aerial image of Jackson Heights shared with me weeks ago by an astronaut and friend currently on board the International Space Station also appears. I wanted to include this as a metaphor for our place in the universe and how all our actions have an impact.