VORTEX
This project continues Smith’s research of the deconstruction of the pictorial plane through performative, sculptural and moving image resources initiated in Bucolic Obscurities (2017). On this occasion and responding to the display of the project in two simultaneous venues, she adds the distance factor as raw material for the work. With 6 surveillance cameras, and through the use of digital bandwidth including a peephole system, Smith directed the live action at MUAC from the Museo Amparo in Puebla. This ambitious tableau vivant reinterprets the The Circle of the Lustful (1824-1827), one of the illustrations that William Blake made for Dante Alighieri ́s Divine Comedy . Blake’s illustration work was never a mere passive visual commentary; he departed from a considerable figurative license through which he advanced his own perspectives. In the same way Smith proposes the stormy composition of Blake as a kind of hallucination of our current condition. Several structural and lighting elements of the film set remain in the space, accompanying two videos that record both the artist directing and the mosaic of frames of the CCTV cameras.
