Liliya Lifanova

Liliya Lifanova is a Kyrgyzstan-born American artist. She received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and has been awarded the Fulbright Fellowship for Installation Art. Her work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally, most recently at Gridchinhall in Moscow, Russia, and at the Parrish Art Museum in Southampton, NY.

‘My work explores notions of nostalgia, identity and dislocation, often using a binary scheme. Based on extensive research, I engage in a period of fastidious fabrication of parameters (spatial, narrative or costume), which I use to direct and define my video and performance projects.’

Project: ‘The Flying Carpet’

The art practice of Liliya Lifanova emanates a feeling of impermanence and fantasy. The Flying Carpet project was the result of a collaboration between the artist, the 5th grade students of the local school, Les Cometes de Llorenç del Penedès, and a group of local stitchers. Inspired by the myths and the nomadic traditions of her native Kyrgyzstan, the artist held a workshop where the children were involved in the creation of a felt carpet.
The workshop was not merely a didactic activity but an experience where the children could share with the artist the location of their magical, real and imaginary places at Cal Figueres, the farmhouse where the workshop was held. Through careful production of costumes, props and staging, Liliya Lifanova created a dream-like scenario where the children were urged to access their inner wizards so as to imbue their work with magic. The felt pieces made by the children were then sewn together by a group of women from the village to create a flying carpet. In the Espai d’Art Les Quintana, Liliya exhibited the carpet and other materials made for the workshop as well as a video piece documenting the whole project. That video piece was the result of the collaboration between the artists and Xavier Mitjan’s editing studio, ‘Solucions Audiovisuals’ in Llorenç del Penedès.

Along with The Flying Carpet project, Liliya Lifanova presented ‘Untitled. Newspapers from January-March 2011. Robert family, a work based on meditative repetition. It comprised over 5000 pieces made with rolled newspapers that the Robert family accumulated in their home between January and March 2011. The result was a spectacular landscape-archive where the patient, dedicated and healing action of the artist was displayed.

Vivek Chockalingam

Vivek Chockalingam is a Bangalore-based artist, creator and sculptor. After graduating with a degree in Product Design from Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology Chockalingam worked on several commissioned design projects centered on environmentally friendly themes. Bottled Kalamari, his installation at Sunburn Goa 2011, was an interactive sculpture comprising a metal framework, upon which discarded plastic bottles found at the festival were incorporated. The sculpture, created in collaboration with artists Nachiappan Ramanathan and Shanti Ganesha, was large enough to be experienced from the inside and grew as the festival progressed, as attendees could stick their empty plastic bottles into the sculpture to help complete it. Another recent installation The Cyclic-bug was commissioned by Puma’s sustainable store in Bangalore, and is made up of discarded bicycle parts.

Project: ‘Ojala’

Vivek’s project rested in an intermediate indefinite state. This uncertainty was present not only in his methodology, which was going through different creative disciplines, but also regarding the materials used and the concept of the piece. The origin of the expression ‘Ojala’, a Castilianism of common use in our country is interpreted by Vivek through the concept ‘Insha’Allah,’ an expression popularly used in Arabic countries that could be translated as: ‘If God wills.’ This concept is defined by the artist as ‘used when something is intended to be done in the future, but not as a certainty but as an uncertainty. That is: beauty lies in the acceptance that nothing is certain and whatever ultimately happens is the way for you to find truth and happiness.’

His installation rested then in a state of transitoriness by transforming a chair in a cosmology of possibilities and impossibilities that materialized both ‘Ojala’ and ‘Insha’Allah.’ These areas of uncertainty are understood by the artist as unique opportunities to undertake new challenges. Vivek was inspired by this concept to create a multifunctional and ambiguous structure that reflects upon the possibility to become something that is located between art, craft and design.