At Polvo Art Studio from July 11th – August 8th, 2003, Cariana Carianne will present their first solo collaborative exhibition titled The She in Me / Where Our Eyes Meet. Together they will transform the gallery space into a collaborative event where they both attempt to answer the same question each day of the show. As a catalyst for action, they will each ponder, consider, reconsider and respond to the posed question -– ‘How does one release their will? ’.

The She In Me/Where Our Eyes Meet is a multimedia collaborative installation by Cariana and Carianne. For the duration of the show, each morning they both enter the gallery space and attempt to answer the question - ‘How does one release their will?’. Using structure as a catalyst for action, they each ponder, consider, reconsider and respond to this posed question. What results is an exhibition space transformed by their daily interactions. Their individual thoughts become preserved through gestural marks recorded on the walls and floor. Their collaborative conversation literally becomes physically present. Day by day and inch by inch, the gallery slowly emerges from an automatic, gestural stage into a large-scale assemblage-installation.

For the artists, the exhibition is about searching the body, looking for the will and listening deeply to seek its release. For them the exhibition is also about time – as both spending time and feeling time. It is about feeling the years sink in their feet while holding time’s potential in their palms. It is about allowing and waiting in endless time. For them it is also about standing and hoping, and being a part of something larger than one alone. The exhibition is about remembering one’s life and living it again intensely. It is also about forgetting one’s face – the shape of the eyes, the color of the hair and the texture of the skin. They believe the ‘release’ sits here. Releasing all that one is and was. For them the exhibition is about finding and discovering the beauty in releasing one’s will to another. For them it is about collaboration.

Cariana Carianne are multidisciplinary collaborative artists interested in reinventing the individual into a collaborative team. Although their unique collaborative relationship as an artist collaborating with herself (or as they prefer to describe it as - two individuals sharing the same body) is extremely unorthodox, they believe the embodiment of twoness is one of the last open and active spaces of non-prescription. They believe this space can lead to a productive understanding of what it means to live in the world alongside others.

By embodying their true selves as both Cariana and Carianne, they equally conceive, participate in, and realize all projects while enacting their merged being. After Cariana received her MFA degree from University of North Carolina, at Chapel Hill in 2001, they moved to Chicago to enable Carianne to complete her MFA degree from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2003. Their installations, objects and videos have been exhibited internationally with their video, ‘What Is It That We Want- The Fugue’, screening in Chicago, San Francisco, Croatia, and Hungry. Currently, they are completing a two-year performance series titled ‘Performing Our Self’ where both collaborators perform simultaneously by taking on separate roles such as breathing and speaking. Currently, they are living and working in Chicago.


COLLABORATIVE EVENTS:
July 11, 2003 6:00-10:00pm
Opening Reception/Live performances

July 12 – August 7, 2003 9:00am-12noon
Daily Impromptu Interactions

July 26, 2003 11am - 12noon
Interview with the artists (by E.C.D. and open to audience
participation)

August 8, 2003 6:00pm-10:00pm
Closing Reception/Live performances
(all events are free and open to the public)

Opening Reception Friday July 11, 2003 from 6-10pm
Closing Reception Friday August 8, 2003 from 6-10pm *
(*an exhibition catalogue will be made available)