Habitat for Artists: OF NATURE
Chris Costan uses her pursuit of outdoor Interventions with a project titled OF NATURE, at Habitat for Artists Micro-Residency, on the grounds of ArtPort Kingston.
This installation becomes a cave-like place. The viewer traverses down a short walkway which leads to the small shed. The HFA East shed is covered in brambles and leaves and it represents the workings of the contained mind. Inside the shed (the mind) one encounters a group of the artist's "interventions" laid out on a table. Here one can leaf through the different interventions where the viewer can witness a diary of what the artist has been thinking about. Since each intervention expresses a different idea, the myriad of variations on each individual thought, the mixture of ideas shows how the mind develop and it can work. The “shed” becomes the mind the shed is a shadow of the interior of a human being, the artist in this case.
There is a reflection on fairytales that often form a growing child.. Think of The Three Little Pigs with the house of sticks, or Briar Rose who falls asleep for a hundred years.
Here, questions are raised on thoughts about human development, human variation and behavior, and how we as a species differentiate from the rest of the animal kingdom. Questions are raised as to how and why we, humanity behave as we do.
OF NATURE, at Habitat for Artists Micro-Residency
ArtPort Kingston, Kingston, NY, June, 2021
installation: varied materials
