Denise Ferreira da Silva and Arjuna Neuman, Sand, Silt, Soot, Soot (Dark Matter), 2020
chalk on blackboard paint
Courtesy of the artists

Sand, Silt, Soot, Soot (Dark Matter) is on display at the Walter C. Koerner Library as part of the exhibition Elemental Cinema: Denise Ferreira da Silva and Arjuna Neuman, which runs at the Belkin from 6 Sep-11 Dec 2022.

The exhibition brings together the collaborative film works of Denise Ferreira da Silva and Arjuna Neuman. In this series of films, the four elements – water, earth, fire, air – inform the artists’ considerations of an entangled existence, and of time and value that reimagine knowledge and existence “otherwise.” This exhibition includes installations of their films Serpent Rain (2016), 4 Waters – Deep Implicancy (2019) and Soot Breath // Corpus Infinitum (2020), as well as archives related to the films.

In the films, the composition and decomposition of the world is structured through the elements. They are fractal compositions, interfacing between the quantic, organic, historic and cosmic, drawing from visual arts, sciences and philosophy. The works edit together footage of both micro and macro landscapes, animation and archival documentation through references that range from quantum mechanics, the blues, diverse philosophies, classical physics, colonial theory to cartomancy. The intellectual and sensorial experience of the works across scale, surface and perspectives demands an assessment of how subjectivity is constructed, how we come to know and ways to unsettle that knowledge through a polyrhythmic entanglement that displaces hierarchies of rational experience.

Corresponding to Soot Breath // Corpus Infinitum, this work at Koerner Library repurposes the elemental symbols for air, water, fire and earth to sand, silt, soot and soot (dark matter).

This installation is a collaboration of the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery and the Walter C. Koerner Library at the University of British Columbia made possible by the generous support of the Audain Foundation. Art in the Library offers new perspectives on contemporary art by presenting art that questions our current perceptions about the world around us.

Photo (above): Rachel Topham Photography