I’ve compiled a list of thoughts that have informed the series I’m currently showing at @saloon.store 🐞
Link in my bio to read the full text 📄
Documentation courtesy of Saloon Store 📷
At Saloon 🪐
Image 1: @nina_panisa 📷
Image 2: courtesy of @saloon.store
The Dust in My Eye explores the value in preserving the emotional past. The documentation of world history has largely prioritised “objective” information over subjective experience. We have an in-depth understanding of many historical events (or certain versions of events), but know little about how it felt to endure them. Utilising symbolic rather than literal imagery, Iona Mackenzie pays homage to the storytelling techniques developed by subjugated communities in response to historical censorship.
Dusty with pastels, the works conjure colours from the artist’s memory, including the turquoise of her Grandma’s jewelry box, the neon orange of a favourite gel pen, and the faded purple of a sprawling lavender bush that grew outside her bedroom window (until one day it was ripped out to let more light in). Oval shapes are repeated across multiple pieces; they are jewels, in some instances, and silk cocoons, eggs, or thrown stones in others. Among them are embellishments that guide the eye like stars. In her fabric works, Iona collages fraying offcuts into landscape-like scenes; a frozen lake containing a silver fish, a seafaring vessel, and a canoe so sharp it resembles a blade.
In The Dust in My Eye, the personal and political past is expressed through psychological symbolism.
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