For this installation, Prouty works with a dream called ‘Utopia’ which explores themes including frustration, violence, desire and false promise. Dream Repeater is a site-specific installation using prints, sculptures, videos and other media. This exhibition retells the dreams in a novel way, building on each other to create a surrealistic, interactive dreamscape for the visitor to explore. Dream Repeater demonstrates how repetition intensifies an experience and allows us to discover hidden meaning from our own memories, dreams and stories.
Prouty has invited other artists to work with her exploring this dream. The theater group, Machine, will perform a piece entitled Over There on Feb. 7 at 7pm in the gallery.
Machine has developed a series of looped actions to accompany and amplify the installation, building on themes of masculinity, longing and impotent rage to create a comic performance that builds to an unsettling climax. Over There is created and performed by Ashby Blakely, Directed by Matt Cosper with costume design by Caroline Bower. www.machinetheatre.org.
A group show exploring the same dream will open at the Nth Gallery, 683 West King Street on Feb 7. The exhibition includes the work of Joe Bigley, Karen Cleveland, Vickie Grube and Rachel Ballard. http://www.nthdegreegallery.com/
Artist statement
I’m fascinated with repetition and how it has the ability to intensify experience and create significance, even as each repetition drifts from the original.
I collect vivid and repeating dreams from others then create repetitions of them in various ways. I write the dreams, I retell them, I reenact them and invite others to adopt them.
In each of these ways, I seek to reinforce and grow the dreams. Perhaps through this process, the dream of one person will transform into something beyond its own borders, just as an obituary begins the retelling of a life that might spin out through many iterations to become, eventually, the myth of a god.
About the artist
IlaSahai Prouty is an artist working with sculptures, installations, video, public art and prints. Prouty received her MFA from the California College of Art in San Francisco, CA and a BFA from Brown University in Providence, RI.
She was a Resident Artist at the Penland School of Crafts, Penland, NC and has exhibited at venues throughout the United States including SECCA, the Asheville Museum and the Cape Ann Museum in Gloucester, MA.
She is currently an Assistant Professor in the Art Department at Appalachian State University where she teaches Art for Social Change among other courses.