Nursed in Darkness
Two-channel video, multi-channel audio, found architecture
dimensions variable
Installation: Phytorio - Nicosia Municipal Gardens, Cyprus
“A [person] must dream a long time in order to act with grandeur, and dreaming is nursed in darkness.” - Jean Genet, Miracle of the Rose.
This immersive two-channel video and sound installation is visible only as day transitions into night, requiring the viewer’s presence during the darkest hours of the circadian cycle. Situated within Phytorio, a former greenhouse in the Nicosia Municipal Gardens, the work utilizes both the indoor and outdoor architecture of the space and grows from its history as a place of nurturing life as well as the Municipal Gardens’ radical yet subversive queer history as a popular cruising ground. A slowly moving light first illuminates and then obscures breathing portraits projected on two exterior windows while a lullaby composed of every sitter’s voice and native language echoes on the hard surfaces of the building’s interior. Each individual video portrait slowly illuminates and then succumbs back into darkness, offering a visual metaphor dedicated to those using the gardens at night for its more subversive purposes.