Synesthesia

Daily beginning at 5pm

An exhibition in video format featuring works by Daria Martin, Beatriz Santiago Muñoz, and Emily Wardill, Synesthesia focuses on video works by artists interested in shifting sensory experiences, slippages of perception, and challenging of the primacy of vision.

Daria Martin’s (b. 1973, San Francisco, California) film At The Threshold (2014–2015) is the second in a trilogy of short films based on Martin’s research into mirror-touch synesthesia, a form of heightened physical sensitivity wherein individuals feel, fear, or see that which they perceive another to be sensing. The work follows a mother-and-son relationship whose entwined proximity is interrupted by a third person.

Beatriz Santiago Muñoz (b. 1972, San Juan, Puerto Rico) filmed her work Otros usos (Other Uses) (2014) from a disused fuel dock off the coast of Puerto Rico now used by fishermen, from which can be seen Vieques Island and Sound. In the film, the view is split up like through a kaleidoscope, disorienting the scene and perhaps also the different temporal registers inhabited by the site.

Emily Wardill’s (b. 1977, Rugby, England) The Pips (2011) is inspired by Gladys Knight & the Pips’ rendition of Kris Kristofferson’s 1970 song “Help Me Make It Through The Night.” The video follows the mesmerizing ribbon dance of a rhythmic gymnast, a silent accompaniment to a remembered or imagined version of the song. Watching the gymnast’s ribbon as it slices through the air like a suspended moment in time, one can almost feel the song’s lyrics “Take the ribbon from my hair… Layin’ soft against your skin, like the shadow on the wall.”

Organized by Melanie Kress, High Line Art Associate Curator.