​This World is not Conclusion (373)

BY EMILY DICKINSON

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This World is not Conclusion.

A Species stands beyond - 

Invisible, as Music -

But positive, as Sound -

It beckons, and it baffles - 

Philosophy, dont know - 

And through a Riddle, at the last - 

Sagacity, must go -

(..)

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Figura Avulsa is pleased to present a solo exhibition by Felicia Atkinson — A PIANO IN THE FOREST — her first in Portugal, combining an installation of paintings, sound, and text. For the opening on Sunday, July 26, at 5:30 PM, the artist has prepared a special reading.

This event is part of a program of guest artists commissioned to record sound pieces specifically created for the Figura Avulsa well, organized in collaboration with Elisa Pône.

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For Felicia Atkinson, human voices inhabit an ecology alongside and within many other things that don’t speak, in the conventional sense: landscapes, images, books, memories, ideas. The French electro-acoustic composer and visual artist makes music that animates these other possible voices in conversation with her own, collaging field recordings, midi instrumentation, and snippets of essayistic language in both french and english. Her drawings and installations are at the frontier of abstraction and figuration, from a singular point of view, maybe animal or vegetal, or the myopic person that she is when she removes her glasses, where objects and creatures, as the Middle Ages poet Sei Shonagon would put it, appear as ”things that are far yet near”. Her visual work is inspired by the drawings of John Cage as well as the works on paper of Helen Frankenthaler, Joan Jonas, Joan Mitchell or Milton Avery: a landscape, or perhaps the blurred dream of it.

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A PIANO IN THE FOREST

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You are a piano in the forest 

we are listening to the trees

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The drawings are listening to the piano, 

they are blooming outdoors

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The piano is listening to the drawings, the window stays open and the bird is answering back 

 

The bees are telling, my hands are moving

I am a piano in the forest

The waves are made from fabric, they are thinking of the sea

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the paintings are drying in the garden next to my dress, in the wind

 

our feet are bare and so is the memory​

— F.A

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Atkinson graduated with a MFA with honours from Les Beaux Arts de Paris. She lives on the wild coast of Normandy and has played music since the early 2000s. She has released many records and a novel on Shelter Press, the label and publisher she co-runs with Bartolomé Sanson. She has collaborated with musicians including Jefre Cantu-Ledesma, Chris Watson, Chris- tina Vantzou, and Stephen O’Malley, and with ensembles including Eklekto (Geneva) and Neon (Oslo). She has performed at venues and festivals including INA GRM/Maison de la Radio and the Philharmonie (Paris), Issue Project Room (NYC), the Bar- bican Center (London), Le Guess Who (Utrecht), Atonal (Berlin), Henie Onstad (Oslo), Unsound (Krakow), and Skanu Mesz (Riga). Her work has been commissioned by filmmakers (Ben Rivers, Chivas de Vinck) and fashion houses (Prada, Burberry). She has exhibited in museums, galleries, and biennials including RIBOCA Biennale (Riga), Overgaden (Copenhagen), BOZAR (Brussels), Espace Paul Ricard (Paris), Publics (Helsinki) and MUCA ROMA (Mexico City).