Art-to-Art Palette Journal

MA: Boston

The Great Bare Mat & Constellation (projection still). Courtesy of Raqs Media Collective, 2012.

WHERE: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.

WHEN: Goes on view Thursday, September 20, 2012 through January 7, 2013.

TITLE: The Great Bare Mat & Constellation

BRIEF ABOUT: The Raqs Media Collective (www.raqsmediacollective.net)  (Jeebesh Bagchi, Monica Narula and Shuddhabrata Sengupta), created two distinct installations in the special exhibition galleries.  The “Great Bare Mat & Constellation” refers to a carpet, a surface for the staging of conversations, displayed at the foot of The Vinegar Tasters, a two-part 17th century Japanese screen from the Museum’s Collection.  The carpet’s repeated motif, woven by a group of expert Bulgarian weavers, indexes the constellation of the Ursa Major (The Great Bear) against a background drawing that traces the exchanges between the three personal computers of the Raqs Media Collective and the world during one hour’s time.

     Raqs members view time as a measure of change and are interested in thinking about how our sense of time as human beings has accelerated, fragmented and intensified in this century.  The intense criss-crossing patterns of the carpet demonstrate the intricacy, complexity and global quality of contemporary communication set against the ancient and leisurely nightly pass time of star gazing.

MORE DETAILS: www.gardnermuseum.org or call 617.566.1401.

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