by her own movement, 2022

solo show at Fonderia 20.9 Gallery, Verona ITALY

Text

An installation of photographs, mobiles, and a single channel video collaborating with 17th century Italian mathematician Maria Agnesi. Components in the installation build on Maria’s mathematical sine curve, whose name was mistranslated to english from ‘curve’ to the ‘witch’ of Agnesi.

Upon entering the gallery one is confronted with a minimal mobile, echo of venus. Steel rod bent and coiled creates an undulating form that aligns to create the mathematical mistranslated curve.  Behind the mobile adhered to the wall, a photographic vinyl of two dark half circles  on either side of a large window that illuminated much of the gallery. This form, this black circle – a mass, a hole, a container of conjuring -repeats throughout the exhibition. Thomsen was immediately drawn to the ”witches” curve as a drawing of an eye, a womb, or mass transversed by a persistent line. This form holds a multiplicity that Thomsen returns to again and again. The intersection of the scientific, the scared and the embodied. Elements in the photographs compile to form the geometry of the curve throughout the exhibition. The site responsive installation around the curve was inspired by the galleries unique architecture and its archway to the lower level staircase to the video screening room. Downstairs a single channel wall projection of tethered to you, 2011/2022 looped every 6 mins. In the video we see hands working rapidly to assemble a form out of a silver ribbon. This form rocks refracting light across the surface of the white table where it rests. The curved mobius like ribbon is cut in half revealing two rings interlinked. In the midst of the cutting the bird songs filling the space from an open window are interrupted by the cries of an infant. The child is babbling at first and slowly escalating their calls for attention as the hands in the video work faster and faster to attempt to have one ring stand independent of another with fail. As one emerges from the lower level and the video the quiet still forms mapping varying geometries and refracted light are filled with the luxury of time/ thinking and begin to vibrate with the energy of their own making.

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Woman must put herself into the text - as into the world and into history - by her own movement." Hélène Cixous

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