Water Ceremony 2022
The video piece Water Ceremony represents a private act of healing. I mirror a process of moving out of a trauma reaction into a state of more peace and well being. Using a 360 camera, I alter the familiar scene of walking on the beach. The lens becomes a portal creating a landscape that feels unearthly but also intensifies the beauty held within it. Water has always offered me a place to play, a refuge from the world and a fascinating aesthetic exploration of nature. I love the way light refracts and reflects off water, its shine and shimmering movement. I return to it again and again as a material and for solace and transmutation. Calm lapping water, the sky as portal and path, shadows keeping me company: all Invite me to focus, a study of perception, on the beauty in everything around me. During the pandemic, the wildness of nature was a vital, studied, beloved connection for me.
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Reclaiming Self in Nature
KIMBERLEE KOYM-MURTEIRA
Spending time in nature allows me to tap into my resilience. In this sacred space, I attune to the allure of shape, light, and sensation. Using a 360 camera, I document this embodiment practice focused on connecting with the environment by capturing images that convey a sense of enclosure and expansion. The resulting photographs serve as acts of healing, yet also exhibit a fragmented and disembodied quality. In an effort to delve into these intangible states, I utilize these images and processes to convey a simultaneous sense of distortion and harmony, beauty and apparition. In exhibiting this work, I create a series of stills prints on metal or project the moving imagery in installation.
The participants in this project include myself, mothers and members of the queer/non-binary AFAB (Assigned Female at Birth) community. These images capture the experience of integrating oneself with the natural world. Frequently, mothers prioritize the needs of others and may overlook their own self-care. My aim is to reestablish a connection between queers claiming their bodies and nature, free from the constraints of patriarchal and heteronormative frameworks. Concealed beneath this altered depiction of the natural world also lies my profound apprehension for the wellbeing of our environment.