Michelle Fornabai: act 3 mix ("To a Water Lily")
04 February - 28 February 2019
Boston City Hall, 1 City Hall Square, Boston, MA 02201
City Hall's 50th Anniversary Event: 07 February, 2-3:30pm
In honor of Boston City Hall's 50th anniversary, the Mayor's Office of Arts and Culture is pleased to present a special exhibition of Michelle Fornabai's act 3 mix ("To a Water Lily").
From poetic installations in public spaces to performing a song in floating concrete, Michelle Fornabai's work balances on the edge between impossibility and inevitability. Situated throughout City Hall's historic galleries on the anniversary of the building's 50th, act 3 mix ("To a Water Lily") comprises more than 200 artifacts documenting the inaugural Boston Artist Fellow's conceptual art practice in dialogue with Boston's Brutalist architecture over the past year.
act 3 mix ("To a Water Lily") begins with Fornabai's installation /performance of her concrete poem in dialogue with Paul Rudolph's "essay in concrete" at Government Service Center. In the third floor gallery, act 3 mix ("To a Water Lily") punctuates the space with video, audio and sculptural installations documenting Fornabai's six day performance at the Erich Lindemann Mental Health Center, which offers voluntary treatment to Boston's most vulnerable and houses 150 resident patients within Government Center. The work first debuted in October 2018 at the Boston Room with daily access to the chapel.
The contrast between the temporal dynamics of Fornabai's perceptual field of floating concrete set against Rudolph's "concrete corduroy" in the Boston Room at the Erich Lindemann Mental Health Center lends itself towards a momentary reflection upon the fragility of strength and paradoxically, the poignant force of vulnerability. Employing existing professional, cultural and political structures, in part, to construct the "Boston Room," Fornabai's installation /performance mediates between perception and state to find places and possibilities for artists.
Fornabai's art practice spans art, architecture, DIY and construction industries as a form of "malpractice," making art mistakes within architectural standards of practice. Her work concretely transforms and recasts the viewer's understanding of materials and methods. The fifth floor gallery hosts an installation of 50 Landscapes in F# Minor in honor of City Hall's 50th anniversary. The work takes inspiration from the artist's 20 years practicing art against the backdrop of the history of concrete in Boston--from beton brut to artists' labors of love.
THE BOSTON CITY HALL GALLERIES, City Hall, 1 City Hall Square, Boston, MA 02201