A couple of weekends ago, Thinkspace hosted Stella Im Hultberg’s (interviewed) new show in their project room concurrently with Audrey Kawasaki’s solo in the main space. Stella’s new pieces, collectively entitled Hollow Resonance including several acrylic on wood paintings as well as some looser pieces combining ink, watercolor, acrylic, and colored pencils.
She explains the deeply personal new body of work – “I’ve had about a year’s worth of meandering thoughts and ideas like stream of consciousness, but they all started with my mom having been in a coma for the past year after falling and injuring her head. She’s unconscious but seems like she does have certain responses like clutching onto my dad’s hand, or trying to open her eyes. To me, it seems as if she’s stuck inside her sleep.
Trying not to be too sad, I was imagining that maybe she’s trapped inside constant dreams, and that hopefully, she is dreaming about her favorite times of her life. Then it evolved into lots of thoughts about the transience of time and youth, the finiteness of our lives.
Last year, I used the flowers as a metaphor for beautiful pain/burden (and/or burdensome beauty) so I wanted the flowers to be heavier looking and more raw, less beautiful. For this body of works I wanted the flowers to show those beautiful, albeit fragile, happy moments in one’s life, so I tried to keep them more delicate looking. But they are still, like last year, a conduit through which I try to connect and sympathize with my mother and motherhood in general.”
Photo & video credit: Birdman Photos.
Discuss Stella Im Hultberg here. Discuss this show here.
