The Art Encounters Foundation and the French Institute of Romania in Timisoara are pleased to invite you to the opening of the exhibition Sporal by Mimosa Echard, which will take place on Thursday, June 6th, from 6pm, at the Garrison (Liberty Square 5).
The exhibition, curated by Ami Barak, continues the research initiated by Mimosa Echard in 2019 at Villa Kujoyama (Kyoto), Japan, on the idea of memory in myxomycetes, unicellular organisms halfway between the animal, plant and fungi kingdoms. The exhibition is based on her first video game, created in collaboration with developer Andréa Sardin and artist Aodhan Madden. It invites you to explore the cavities of an organism in perpetual transformation, inspired by the life cycle of the myxomycete. A monumental patchwork suspended at the heart of the exhibition reveals an audiovisual montage based on the video game.
The work’s constituent fabrics come from a multitude of sources, fusing plant and industrial materials found online or in the artist’s studio. Mimosa Echard stages a psychedelic environment, oscillating between states of latency and bursts of vitality. The video, projected against a patchwork, is inspired by #iamonlysleeping – a widespread practice on the live streaming platform Twitch, in which people expose themselves while sleeping and consent to their surveillance.
The installation is accompanied by a pop-experimental soundscape created by Aodhan Madden and Yvan Etienne, consisting of field recordings and various voices, including that of Charli XCX. Mimosa Echard, winner of the Marcel Duchamp Price in 2022, plunges us into a hybrid universe which we can continue to explore beyond the exhibition, by downloading the video game Sporal available free of charge (www.sporal.net).
The exhibition can be visited until the 14th of July, Thursday – Friday: 4pm – 8pm and Saturday – Sunday 2pm – 8pm. The access is free.
The exhibition is organised by the Art Encounters Foundation in collaboration with the French Institute of Romania in Timisoara and it is financed by the Institut Français Paris.
