You Can Call Me Monster
2024
Tinsel on Cage
You Can Call Me Monster is a work that questions the gaze, boundaries and existence. The birdcage is made to look at what is inside, but it is covered in shimmering silver tinsel, distracting the viewer from looking inside and disrupting conventional perspectives.
Through the effects of light and reflection, the cage actually conceals and transforms itself, obscuring its reality for the viewer. Can we still call it a 'cage'? Or does it become a form or a being in its own right?
Detail photo of You Can Call Me Monster, €55 Project, 2024
Exhibition photo of You Can Call Me Monster, artkin groove - maina Kollektiv, 2024
Exhibition photo of You Can Call Me Monster, artkin groove - maina Kollektiv, 2024
The title "You Can Call Me Monster" sharpens these questions. How should the viewer perceive this cage? We are unsure of what is hidden beneath its shiny surface and what lies within. Is the shine a decoration or an inherent part of the birdcage?
This birdcage in the middle of the garden seems to harmonise with its surroundings, but at the same time its artificiality makes it an alien presence. We don't know if the birdcage holds something trapped inside, or if it becomes something in itself. Perhaps we could call it a 'monster'?
Through this work, the artist explores the dual meanings of the cage - the visible and the invisible, the frame and the being, the confined and the revealed - and metaphorically delivers them to the viewer.
Exhibition photo of You Can Call Me Monster, artkin groove - maina Kollektiv, 2024
Exhibition photo of You Can Call Me Monster, artkin groove - maina Kollektiv, 2024