Lucia Monge

Abstract

 

Environmental issues are part of our daily conversations but not as common in our everyday considerations. The times call on us to approach things differently. We must find alternative ways to relate to each other and to understand the real issues of our ecology. We cannot perceive the whole through our accustomed senses, so we must open and expand our perception. Art offers that possibility, allowing for points of contact across distance while physically representing that space in between. How do we relate to other living beings around us, determine what is living, and decide who is part of our own kin(d)? This thesis is an open invitation to explore movement as one of the characteristics shared by all living things and as a medium to experience (first hand) the interconnected system. In my sculptural practice, I make contact with plants, which are often perceived as “less alive” and apparently immobile. I score for interspecies connectivity through small gestures that foster resonance in time and open common ground between mediums and languages to redefine the “border”. [Nos]otros: our others, acknowledges others as part of our own self challenging the divides that establish otherness, specially the one drawn between the animate and inanimate. This construct, like any other fence, calls to be jumped over, repeatedly. [Con]tacto: with touch, is the practice of touching difference. A way of coming to know through an embodied experience that implies tactful touch.