Imitation of Life

With "Imitation of Life," Kunstverein München presents the first institutional solo exhibition in Europe by Carissa Rodriguez. The exhibition centers on a new video work created during the first year in the life of the artist’s first child and opens soon after the baby turns one. The production timeline for the artist coincides with the period known as ‘primary maternal preoccupation’—a mindset of psychic interdependence between mother and child. The durational video work enacts ‘reverie’­—the experience of being lost in thought. Filmed exclusively during the hour between 6am to 7am, or the break of dawn, it is not the sunrise that is recorded, but its reflection in the phallic mirror: a nearby skyscraper seen from the window of the baby’s room in the artist’s apartment. By framing a natural occurrence (sunrise), a landscape (Manhattan skyline), a chosen hour (before the workday begins), and an intrapsychic state (‘matrescence’), the video occupies a liminal space between interior and exterior, conscious and unconscious and embodies the inherent contradiction between daydreaming and productive labor. In this framework, ‘free time’ is rendered paradoxical through the artist’s effort to translate life into art. Modes of reflexivity and ‘mirroring’ (mental, physical, metaphorical) run throughout Rodriguez’s exhibition while the reveries engage the often-conflicting temporal demands of exhibition-making and caregiving. Drone cinematography, ubiquitous in modern warfare, is tested as a medium to convey tenderness and intimacy. "Imitation of Life" also features two off-site projects in the vicinity of the Kunstverein München. Following previous solo projects, namely "The Maid" (2018) and "La Collectionneuse" (2013), Rodriguez once again works in sets of three. In her Munich exhibition, the artist connects three distinct institutions of self-cultivation: the museum, the school, and the cinema.