Digital mockup of gallery installation "What Does She See When She Shuts Her Eyes" by Sabina Ott and Dana Berman Duff. Sound design by AJ McClenon, haiku by Stephanie Barber, title effects by Jon Lee.
Shot in Iceland and Mexico
Two-wall projection that turns the gallery into the center of a lava tube.
Link to right screen full video: vimeo.com/304736824/6f5c3b6b0d
Aspect/Ratio in Chicago from January/ February, 2019.
Alchemy Film Festival, Scotland, May 2019
Loosely conceived with artist Sabina Ott six months before her death from cancer, the piece was developed for an exhibition at Aspect/Ratio gallery in Chicago in January 2019. The two-screen installation projects videos onto opposing walls, thus placing viewers in the center of an Icelandic lava tube where they move slowly into the interior while experiencing hurtling lava balls and spiraling text, with sudden shifts and bursts of color giving way to dripping ice caves—the culmination is a rapturous flight over the sea. Sabina Ott believed that life comes from water and that when we die, we return to water. Duff attempts to convert Ott’s metaphor of invading tumors besieging the female body into an experience of liberation through watery upheaval.
Biographies
Sabina Ott (October 8, 1955 – June 26, 2018) was an American artist known for her broad range of work from painting to installation to sculpture and her central role in the art world as teacher, administrator, and recently, as the founder of the exhibition space Terrain, which invites artists to create installations and performances using the exterior of her suburban Chicago home. Exhibiting since 1985, Ott participated in over 100 solo and group exhibitions at institutions in many cities across the U.S. and in Sao Paulo, Brazil; Auckland, New Zealand; Melbourne, Australia. Her work is included in numerous museum collections such as the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Oakland Museum of Art. She completed a public art commission for the Chicago Transit Authority and had solo exhibitions at the Chicago Cultural Center and the Hyde Park Art Center. Ott was recognized by the Chicago Tribune as the 2015 Chicagoan of the Year in Art and was awarded Distinguished Teaching of Art Award by the College Art Association in 2016. She received a Guggenheim Fellowship for 2015-16.
Dana Berman Duff’s artworks are included in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art and the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York, the Phillips Collection, Brooklyn Museum (NYC), The Carnegie Museum, and a number of private collections. Her works in small-format film and video have been screened in numerous festivals, including the Toronto International Film Festival, International Film Festival Rotterdam, the Biennale de l’Image en Mouvement in Geneva, Edinburgh International Film Festival, San Francisco Cinematheque, Anthology Film Archives, Cairo Film Festival, Rencontres Internationales (Paris & Berlin), Dortmund/Cologne International Women’s Film Festival, among many. The Gringas (2013) was winner of Best Documentary Feature at the 2014 Mexico IFF.
