STARFISH PROJECT
Residence at Nirox art Foundation and project at JAG Johannesburg South Africa.
The starfish is a peculiar animal. You cut off one of its arms and another one will reappear. And, not only that, the severed limb will become a new starfish itself, creating new life from the apparently violent occurrence, from the removal of a very part of itself.
Taking this example of a beautiful act of nature, Nuria ́s project for her residency at Nirox aims to follow on the same path as the starfish, creating a multitude of works all stemming from the same nuclei.
Starting from the construction of a simple cube within the gallery space, Nuria will then proceed to create a second skin on the structure through wrapping it with removable wooden shapes, creating an interior three dimensional zone.
This interior space will then be painted during the first week of the residency, each piece of the construction being marked with a future date, its date of severance from the cube itself.
The structure in this way becomes a physical calendar, Nuria removing parts of the nucleus on their specific date, then creating new street works originating from the removable parts.As the days continue the cube is thus slowly dismantled, but the destruction of the original work only serves to create new life within the city, new offspring from the original maternal figure.
The Starfish Project is not simply designed to highlight the obvious boundedness of the gallery space however, but equally to show the ease of communication with the outside world. Rather than the traditional approach of street pieces simply entering inside the ́white cube ́,
Nuria intends to have the original gallery work escape outside the walls of the institution, driving the audience from the the inside to the outside as well.
The creative destruction of the cube equally highlights not only the overtly ephemeral nature so prevalent in Nuria ́s works, but the importance of the entire process, the ability to examine the artist themselves growing from the inside to the outside. From being able to physically enter inside the cube within the gallery space, the artist`s created world, her nucleus, the visitor will then be able to see the work blosoming and growing, forming new elements within the city, reaching outside the gallery and into the world.
Rafael Schacter