Landscape in AO

A O is the sound of breathing. It’s also the name of a colour used to describe natural phenomena in Japanese. Usually translated as ‘blue-green’, what’s lost in this translation are the myriad hues traversing a wider colour spectrum. In this work, AO is a spectrum extending across human and nonhuman rhythms. Inspired by ancient land rituals, where costumes were created from leaves, grasses or skins, as camouflage, here the technology of ‘green screen’ is used to reverse the logic of Western landscape painting. Instead of nature being an object over there —  the background to the figure —  it is the human that disappears so that the landscape, and its movements, come into focus. Sensor technology embedded in a wearable crochet sculpture is the membrane that enables this dissolution of boundaries. The data from the vibrations of chi 氣 become a meditative sound composition tracing this body-environment encounter.

Dominique Baron-Bonarjee’s practice spans different mediums, with liveness occupying a central place in her process and inquiry. Guided by the Eastern spiritual traditions of nonduality, she speculates on an expanded field of the body so as to nurture ecological and ethical relations with nonhuman entities.

She has shown work internationally, in galleries, festivals, biennales and public space, including at the Nakanojo Biennale in Japan, the Isamu Noguchi Room (Keio University) Tokyo, Galerie Wedding in Berlin, the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre (BACC). She recently collaborated with Astrida Neimanis, author of ‘Bodies of Water’, for Lofoten International Arts Festival 2019; she presented her lecture-performance ‘Tales of Fabrication’ at the Tai Kwun Centre in Hong Kong for the ASAP Annual Symposium, and the accompanying film was screened at Tate Exchange, London. Her public space performances have been commissioned by Chisenhale Dance Space, London and Håb / Word of Warning in Manchester.

She is a current doctoral researcher in the Art Department, Goldsmiths University of London.