THAW

estudiotres is opening Friday January 18th with the group show--Thaw: Winter won't last forever.

Samia Mirza presents her work Conjoined Snowmen (We all Fall Down) which is a beautiful and sad sculpture. I have variously interpreted this sculpture through many different readings. Mirza's work is an inspiration for me and has helpped me understand how "art in the present-tense" must be experienced in the moment. Standing before the sculpture we are transported to the moment of pre-reflective wonderment, where a child creates his very first sculpture before he even understands words. This pre-reflective moment of joy, intuition, gut feeling and wonder comes from birth. Imagine the shock of being born, of coming out of the whom and seeing the world for the first time.

Mirza's work brings us back to ourselves. Importantly, her work brings her back to herself, telling us stories of who she is.

Alternatively, I have seen this work through pre-modern, modern, fruedian, post-modern, feminist, semiotic and even queer lens. Conjoined Snowman reminds me that much great art is open ended, free to be interpreted and reinterpreted through different views and new sets of eyes.

Through a certain lens I see the two snowman as a sad impossible homoerotic love, two of the same kind, lovers who can't make love work-- collapsed on the floor. Or maybe forbidden desire, larger than any of us.