RIYADH: The theme of this year’s Noor Riyadh festival — “In the Blink of an Eye” — “resonates deeply” with the practice of American conceptual artist Addie Wagenknecht, she told Arab News in a statement.
“The ‘blink’ is both literal and metaphorical as it’s about what we perceive in a fraction of a second, what we miss, and what remains ambiguous in that fleeting moment of vision,” she said. “Much of technology is about permanence and the theme plays with the idea that everything is based in a sort of temporary place or state. There’s also a deeper connection to themes I’ve explored throughout my career: the idea that meaning emerges and disappears in moments.”
“Body/Light” by Addie Wagenknecht and artist duo Random International. (Supplied)
Her installation for the festival — “Body/Light,” a collaboration with artist duo Random International — she explained, “works with this directly.” Described on the Noor Riyadh website as “positioning the human form as both source and subject of illumination,” the work uses sensors to capture the outline of each visitor, which it then “translates into beams that shimmer through a mist field, composing momentary sculptures of radiance.”
“The work uses light and viewers’ own movements to reveal and conceal information, creating moments where understanding shifts instantaneously,” Wagenknecht explained. “Just as a blink can change what we see, the work’s interactive nature means that perception is constantly in flux. In a single glance, a viewer might miss the collaborative choreography between their body and the light, or they might catch it entirely.”
For an event like Noor Riyadh, where visitors will likely come “with different expectations” than those in an art gallery or museum, Wagenknecht noted that “the audience becomes even more critical, because the context is different.”
She continued: “For ‘Body/Light,’ the audience is the work. The installation cannot exist without them. So their experience isn’t secondary; it’s constitutive.
“Participation in Noor Riyadh means the work reaches beyond the traditional art world. It reaches families, young people, people encountering (conceptual art) for the first time. That responsibility to create something that’s both conceptually rigorous and accessible is something I take seriously,” she concluded.
