ARTFUL BLOGGER: nichola feldman-kiss installation displays horrific images from 2011 massacre in Sudan
Artful Musing

ARTFUL BLOGGER: nichola feldman-kiss installation displays horrific images from 2011 massacre in Sudan

By PAUL GESSELL

nichola feldman-kiss, until the story of the hunt is told by the lion / facing horror and the possibility of shame, 2011-2013, sixty-one digital photographs, three-channel sound composition, electro-luminescent back-light media, Duratrans media, loud speaker system, plastics, wood, electronics, and custom software, installation view, Terms of Engagement: Averns, feldman-kiss, Stimson, Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Queen's University, 26 April–10 August 2014. Photo: Paul Litherland.
nichola feldman-kiss, until the story of the hunt is told by the lion / facing horror and the possibility of shame, 2011-2013, sixty-one digital photographs, three-channel sound composition, electro-luminescent back-light media, Duratrans media, loud speaker system, plastics, wood, electronics, and custom software, installation view, Terms of Engagement: Averns, feldman-kiss, Stimson, Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Queen’s University, 26 April–10 August 2014. Photo: Paul Litherland.

The curved backlit photographs glow as they spiral heavenward from the floor of the darkened room. It is as if some whirlwind has just passed through, disturbing what had once been a neat arrangement.

The photographs are fragments of lives disappearing into the gloom. From a distance, the installation looks peaceful and inviting. Until, that is, you realize what is pictured in these photographs. Then the arrangement becomes horrific because the images are of corpses, skeletons and spent armaments – reminders of a 2011 massacre in the Sudanese community of Kaldak.

This installation by Ottawa artist nichola feldman-kiss is titled “until the story of the hunt is told by the lion / facing horror and the possibility of shame (Jonglei State, Sudan)”. It can be seen at the Agnes Etherington Art Centre in Kingston as part of the nationally touring exhibition Terms of Engagement curated by the University of Ottawa art professor Christine Conley. (more…)