Shana Moulton

Vitrine
Shana Moulton
Outhouse Portal
(18.02.17 – 02.04.17)

Opening with a performance on Friday 17.02.17 at 8 pm

NICC is proud to present a new vitrine presentation, video and performance by the Californian-born, New York-based artist Shana Moulton (°1976).

Shana Moulton makes videos, performances and installations. She is probably best known for her video series Whispering Pines (2002-ongoing). In these hilarious, wacky and surrealist works, her alter-ego Cynthia – a hypochondriac dressed in surprisingly elderly-looking clothes for her age – is looking for physical healing and spiritual salvation. In her quest for self-improvement, Cynthia embarks on a search for therapeutic help – whether through prescription drugs or gurus of all kinds, including The Galactic Pot Healer who crafts a pot made from the skin of her back – or is guided by a magical sign like a ladder leading to a secret room in Whispering Pines 8. Cynthia is looking for meaning and spiritual awakening in a consumer-driven, lifestyle-obsessed digital age, trying to fill in a existential void that the pharmaceutical and wellness industry is all too eager to respond to.

Set in kitschy decors of a highly artificial and stylised nature, including rock-salt lamps, cat paintings or tacky reproductions of classic Greek sculptures – elements that also recur in her installations – Moulton’s work draws from both popular culture and a New Age lifestyle. Filmed with what looks like video-equipment from the early 90s, her videos refer to the aesthetics of home movies, infotainments and 80s-style aerobics videos. Deliberate clumsy and obsolete graphic special effects reinforce the supernatural, magical and dreamlike events that happen to Cynthia, while the esoteric music – clearly inspired by Enya – in the form of pan flutes, ethereal synthesizers or Native American shamanic chants, reinforces the hallucinatory and psychedelic mood of the videos.

At NICC, Moulton will present a new installation and a video. On the night of the opening, she will also present a special performance.

More video and installation work by Shana Moulton is on view in the group exhibition Artefact: The Act of Magic

STUK, Leuven
21 FEB – 09 MAA
Curated by Karen Verschooren / STUK & Ils Huygens / Z33

www.artefact-festival.be/en/program/artefact-expo-act-magic