HYDE PARK ART CENTER, CHICAGO
CarianaCarianne’s newest artwork is a malleable set of forms that are tweaked daily. The gallery appears like an artist’s studio, the place where ideas grow and materials ferment, finally to be delivered as an artwork. Here, however, the finished work is itself a work in progress, where viewers are witness to the physical maturation and conceptual evolution of the question, who am I? Or rather, who are we, as CarianaCarianne are two people within a single body, collaborating on artworks together. Like the royal We, the all encompassing first-person plural tense that in its pomposity also aims at maximum inclusion, CarianaCarianne’s split-ego extends to include us. The myth of the doubled artist extends exponentially beyond itself, doubling upon its doubles until all are infected. Like the chorus of megaphones that shout at each other in the gallery, the search for our unique utterance ends up in auditory chaos, where a crowd or a mob of us is at the gates of our identity, pleading ourselves for self-understanding. CarianaCarianne is not a psychological glitch; rather, they show us that our sense of an inner life is a thing of fiction; a publicly traded sentiment; a spilled intimacy.
Published in Newcity (April 11, 2007)
