The New Church is a site specific mixed media installation consisting in to create an area surrounded by sequences of small and large golden beads hanging from the ceiling of the hall from the main entrance of Islington Art Factory in London (where in the mosaic floor contains the words (The New Church).
The sequence of beads reminds the viewer of rosaries, the luxury of churches but they are rather a symbolic representation of prison bars cell. Once inside the space, alone or not, you can be disturbed by the bouncing image and also capture the gaze of the viewers looking at you inside, and vice-versa.
Inside the area, in one of the walls, a video projection of a crucifix out of focus and quite not recognizable at first, is bouncing on the screen. Playing in loop, it starts from motionless to speeding up until it reaches the side edges of the projection, than slowing down nearly motionless and speeding up again…provoking a sense of hypnotism to the viewer.
My concern with this work is to make the viewer re-think of prison systems, where prison is not only that ones for criminals, but also the (free) society that we are apparently living at the moment where religion, politics and media have the power of manipulation
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