Archive 2022 KubaParis

Interwoven

Location

Meyer Riegger Berlin

Date

03.03 –08.04.2022

Photography

Oliver Roura

Subheadline

Scientific research, high and mass culture, and the processes of cultural production in contemporary society plays an important role in the work of Melvin Moti, whose practice is traversing films, books, objects and drawing, enquires into the power of human imagination and abstraction, looking at how perception works neurologically and psychologically. His earlier works include a guided tour in the empty rooms of the Hermitage through memory (No Show, 2004), the human ability to make images appear on the retina from total darkness (The Prisoner’s Cinema, 2008) or the representation of the fourth dimension (The Eightfold Dot, 2013). The artist gives form to obscure anecdotes, incidents, and individuals - or, what he calls black holes - that he claims haven’t been contextualized by official history. In his film works, which are always made in 35mm format, he also examines how scientific and historical processes influence our visual culture.

Text

Resting on the west coast of Taketomi, an island in the Yaeyama archipelago in southern Okinawa, stands a rock. Surrounded by the movement of the tides of the sea, this rock, named Niran, is unlike other rocks. It stands out from the sea, upright, as if a sculpture on a pedestal of petrified coral. Its magnifying appeal comes from being a sacred rock and upon closer examination, one will find that it plays a central role in the spiritual ceremonies conducted by female shamans on the island. The Yaeyama Islands, situated on the outmost southern borders of Japan, are known to house matriarchal communities, which are often headed by female spiritual leaders, shamans, who act as mediums between nature and the human world. Sacred rocks, such as Niran, play a central role in their belief system, which is a hybrid of Shintoism, Buddhism and Chinese and Micronesian mythologies. Since 2016, artist Melvin Moti has been returning to the Yaeyama Islands to photograph and document Niran and other sacred rocks on several Yaeyama Islands. Over 30,000 photographs have been assembled for Moti’s latest film, Interwoven. The stories, oral histories and mythologies surrounding these rocks point to the ancient custom of storytelling as an elemental part of human nature. A second important component of the shamanic spiritual practice of the Yaeyama Islands is the act of weaving fabrics. By the use of an elaborate process – obtaining thread from fibres of banana trees, extracting dyes from local plants and utilizing the complex technique of double ikat weaving – each piece of woven fabric takes several years to complete. The fabrics are worn by shamans during their rituals, reflecting their close relationship and interaction with the natural world. Each piece of woven textile, assembled from small portions of nature, is in fact a long meditation on time. They could, therefore, be considered a time-based medium. To accompany the film, a new series of handwoven fabrics from the Yaeyama Islands will be presented. A self-published artist book, containing notes, photographs and research, will be made available during the exhibition.

Melvin Moti