Alina Exhibition SL
"The act of repeating is predictable and comforting where process is prolonged and ending is deferred." (CR)
I absolutely love the direction this standard level student took in her investigations. Her work explores subtle but sophisticated concepts around systems, repetition and visual information through video, paper, collage, textiles and mixed media pieces. It is a tribute to form, material, and concept, and how bound to each other they are. One gets the sense that she really enjoyed the process and let it guide her to new discoveries. Brilliant mind! Thank you too to her amazing teacher Gora Lisazo! The well written Curatorial rationale and the informative exhibition texts are well worth reading and sharing with students. A super 
29 points out of 30
Exhibition Overview Photo
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6 Exhibition Pieces and Texts (SL)
1.Same place, different time
Digital video edited in Adobe Premiere Pro, 1 min 45 secs
Inspired by graphic novel “Here” by Richard McGuire and the work of photographer Kenneth Josephson, the video presents an overlapping of multiple different moments in time within the same fixed spaces, showing the recurring similarities between the everyday lives of different individuals, the spontaneous intersections of strangers, and the meditative flow of casual crowds. The clips were filmed in several locations around Copenhagen on a Sunday afternoon.
2.Valley Stripes
Magazine collage on illustration board
70 x 100 cm
Consisting of linear colors, textures, and landscapes cut out from magazines, this collage incorporates the Gestalt principles such as symmetry, similarity, and common fate, in order to create a “unified whole” from the individual fragments. It explores the notion of “multiples” on a formal and visual level. The process was largely intuition based, with connections formed between different pieces, emerging from the repeating, restructuring, recombining of the finite elements.
3.Sand ripples (series)
Various materials, left to right: gauze and PVA glue; HDPE plastic bags; cardboard on watercolor paper; linen and PVA glue; packaging paper on watercolor paper; hessian and acrylic medium; plaster cloth, plaster of paris, and acrylic paint; clay and glaze; LDPE plastic grocery bags
Each approx. 23 x 25 cm, 9 units total
Ripples marks are an incredible form of self-organization, made by the motion of individual sand grains that accumulate into distinctive patterns. I have taken this form and replicated it multiple times each in a different material, changing how we perceive it. There are multiple possibilities of the sequence in which they can be arranged in, and there is the potential of continuing to make more. Each ripple piece can be viewed in a part/whole relationship; by itself or compared against others.
4.Nature / Crowds (diptych)
Mixed media on illustration board (acrylic gel medium photo transfer, printed images, magazine cutouts, acrylic paint, transparency sheets, fine liner pen on paper, gridded notebook paper)
Each 50 x 70 cm, 2 pieces total
This diptych explores concepts of self-organization and emergent systems in both crowds of people and in nature side-by-side, establishing similarities between the way humans and elements in nature arrange. The incorporated and reproduced data, information, and magazine images removed from their initial context lose part of their original meaning yet gain new associations. These are influenced by Robert Rauschenberg’s mixed media works and contain repetition and “small multiples” within.
5.56 lines
Images printed on paper, glued on white fabric stiffened with PVA glue. Original drawings were done on either paper or digitally.
25 x 100 cm
I asked random strangers on the internet to ‘draw a line’ and upload the image anonymously through Reddit. The resulting crowdsourced piece is a collaborative collection of 56 responses (including my own) arranged vertically, showing the same subject repeated multiple times yet interpreted differently. Exciting and perhaps surprising results arise from an amalgamation of individual creative expression in response to an open prompt. Participants gave full consent for their images to be used.
6.How to knit
Wool, cotton, and acrylic yarn in various colors, paper labels
35 x 143 cm
With each row representing one week, this knitted piece visualizes GoogleTrends search data of the popularity of the term “how to knit” over the past 5 years through color. Search popularity shows the cumulative relationship among individual searches, a self-organizing phenomenon, showing a repeated pattern of increased searches during winter time and Covid-19 lockdown. The concept was inspired by Ed Hawkin’s infamous “Warming Stripes” and the Tempestry Project showing climate data.
Curatorial Rationale
My exhibition relates to the notion of the “multiple” through exploring repetition and self-organization/emergent systems in natural and human phenomena. I demonstrate repetition in three main ways—formally, conceptually, and through process—featuring Deleuze’s ‘mechanical’ (exact reproduction) and also ‘dynamic’ repetition (evolving through time). The title comes from statistician Edward Tufte’s “small multiples,” a data visualization technique of multiple versions of the same chart in succession, showing incremental changes or comparisons between them. Working primarily with collage (magazine, mixed media, video collage) has enabled me to assimilate fragments of material from different origins, removing information and data from its original context. Collage helps create order from chaos, but also implicates a certain degree of spontaneity, perhaps generating surprising or humorous results.
The opening video Same place, different time highlights individual and collective movement in casual crowds through a layering of frames. Being projected against the wall, the viewer is invited to walk past and have their silhouette become part of the crowd. Turning the corner, the works progress from a mostly formal level in Valley Stripes and Sand ripples (series). This focus on self-organization in nature continues in the first part of Nature/Crowds (diptych), establishing links and shifting attention to human crowds in the second part of this piece. Concepts of human behaviour and power of the collective continue in 56 lines, combining drawings made by fifty-six strangers on the internet. This is followed by how to knit, further exploring self-organizing internet phenomena through Google search data.
All pieces have formal similarities in the use of repetition and geometric lines. Sand ripples, for instance, were arranged in evenly spaced rows maintaining use of linear succession, and the video Same place, different time is looped, intentionally blurring the boundary between start and end. Othertimes, repetition is imbued heavily in the process itself which I find can be a form of solace, as in how to knit where the same motion was repeated 33,670 times. The act of repeating is predictable and comforting where process is prolonged and ending is deferred. All my artworks share this quality of hypothetically being able to continue and repeat further; increasingly more rows could be added to Valley Stripes, 56 lines, how to knit, and Sand ripples. Placed side by side in the exhibition space, I hope for each piece to be viewed alone, but also as a collective—more than the sum of its parts.
Interested to see more of her process and idea development? View Alina's SL Process Portfolio