Single Mother Songs From The End Of Nature is a series of installations and a scenography,
at the scale of an architecture,
Using the full catalog of functional details of an exhibition space
to transform deeply its perception
and draw an immersive and illusive response
to the interior environement of the building,
as an extension of to the poetical and political content of the films by Melanie Bonajo
Single Mother Songs from the End of Nature
is the solo show of Mélanie Bonajo
in Frankfurter Kunstverein,
The show is an in situ reinterpretation of the Night Soil Trilogy
the installation series was initiated at Foam Museum Amsterdam in 2016
in collaboration with Clémence Seilles.
hand dyed fabrics, sand, pigments, gelatin filters, screens…
The exhibition at Frankfurter Kunstverein presents several recent work groups. The experimental, semi-fictional documentary trilogy “Night Soil” consists of the three autonomous films “Fake Paradise” (2014), “Economy of Love” (2015) and “Nocturnal Gardening” (2016). In “Progress vs Regress” (2016) Melanie Bonajo examines the impact of modern inventions on social relations. She takes as a starting point the perspective of the elderly, who have witnessed some of the most extreme industrial, technological and digital revolutions. In collaboration with the artist a new work is produced for the show at Frankfurter Kunstverein, entitled “Progress vs Sunsets” (work in progress, 2017), the first spatial adaptation of her complex piece “Matrix Botanica – Non Human Persons”.
Bonajo’s works are eclectic and anarchic in their visual imagery, political and activist in their approach, yet poetic and humorous in their veracity. Her experimental, semi-fictional documentaries are often based on face-to-face encounters. The artist creates possibilities for further development, and she thus presents us with humans who playfully stage themselves before her camera, revealing their stories and thoughts. Bonajo is an empathetic investigator; she lives and experiences together with the people she portrays.
Text by Franziska Nori, director of Frankfurter Kunstverein.
The trio « has created a series of immersive rooms especially for the Frankfurter Kunstverein: playful stage-worlds and artificial landscapes which invite one to recline, to slow down. At the same time, these also operate as an expansion of Bonajo’s filmic imagery, physically enveloping and transporting the viewer into a frenzy of colour, light, and material. »
Text by Franziska Nori, director of Frankfurter Kunstverein.
With installation in collaboration with Clémence Seilles and Thomas Ballouhey,
All Movies by Mélanie Bonajo.
Texts and curation by Francisca Nori.
Pictures N.Miguletz
2017