“Never(W)here“, an immersive Exhibition at SAIC Low-Res MFA Thesis Show, July 2021
Valerie Xanos has an interdisciplinary artist practice. Her thesis work uses analog and digital media to create site-specific, immersive installation art within a particularly composed architectural space. The Exiled in Light :|: Never(W)here series uses light projection, LCD installation, video animation and a digital soundscape to focus on personal narratives of body, memory, and perceptual light shifts. She explores light as mediated through a spectrum of materials, including fiber/acrylic constructions, animation, and digital processing. Various iterations of projected and reflected light investigate synthetic relationships within a constructed image/space immersion. This work is a companion to her written thesis which takes the form of a science fiction narrative that explores the same concepts and theories via the transmutation of a single character.
“I create immersive environments that are contemplative and trace-inducing in order to produce shifts of perception for the participating viewer. Animations and projections provide portals to sublime light and dark visions based on my experience of being exiled in an alternate universe which is both tragic and sensual, sinister and soothing.
My influences range from tales of magic and mythology, to sci-fi novels and movies, to physics – which makes me think about how light waves can harness a form of space/time travel. Concepts of falling into rabbit holes, being lost in fairy lands, underworlds, and alternate dimensions are used as a metaphor for alternative perceptions.”
*Photos by Athena Xanos, Valerie Xanos, Thanatos Xanos, Brie Buczek.
Full Videos can be found via the links below:
Images from the Never(W)here exhibition:
Exiled in Light :|: Light Matters, 2017
and Exiled in Light :|: Through the Looking Glass, 2018
Exhibitions at the Chicago Art Department.
studioxanoi.com 