The Empire of Lights
Deriving its title from the Magritte painting of the same name and its central paradox, “The Empire of Lights” is a video installation that reconciles multiple spaces, both on and off screen. Shown looped in a blacked out room on either a monitor or as a projection, the presence and absence of light projecting from the screen extends the experience of the work from visual to embodied. The video is an examination of the reconciliation of two internal, domestic spaces at different times of day. Using a dialectical approach, the individual spaces are brought together to form a journey towards enlightenment. Through the use of metaphor, this progression can be seen as finding a utopian common ground between differing individual mental spaces to come up with a mutual solution.
Verdon Matthew
