The door you open — Yani aviles

THE DOOR YOU OPEN IS DETERMINED BY HOW YOU TWIST THE KNOB.THE ROOM YOU ENTER IS DETERMINED BY HOW YOU OPEN THE DOOR.

11/13/2022 - 01/15/2023

All photos are courtesy of the artist (self) and Apparatus Projects.

The door you open is determined by how you twist the knob. The room you enter is determined by how you open the door was a three-person exhibition with Mira Dayal, Micah Schippa, and myself at Apparatus Projects. I exhibited a sound piece (Collapsing timelines), discrete works (Time immemorial and sunrise, sunset, ecliple), and held ritual candle-making sessions (Shaping Time) with participants. Referencing Lynda Benglis’s “pour” works, I transformed her individual gestures into a collective act of healing focused on “Shaping Time and Collapsing Timelines”— a prompt to revisit past experiences to acknowledge and reshape them. As Prentis Hemphill states: “trauma is time-traveling without a choice and healing is time-traveling with one.” While I managed a boiling pot of candle wax and arranged foraged materials and medicines to add to the mixture, participants and I sat together. I explained the properties of the materials as we discussed and sensed what was emerging for each person—anything needing transformation, transmutation, sharing, or simply more time to sit with. I acted as the brewer and facilitator, holding space throughout. Each individual’s intention or wish was infused into the wax, and we poured over each other’s hardened wax to dissolve these past experiences and reclaim our agency in the present.

Time immemorial, sunrise, sunset, eclipse, Shaping Time, and Collapsing timelines all contemplate transitions and complicate notions of presence, exploring the temporal through celestial, seasonal, alchemical, and collective means.

Listen to Collapsing timelines

Read the Press Release

Image list

Press