Autour de La Fin Du Monde:
Amelia Biewald

Autour de La Fin Du Monde, a site-specific installation by Amelia Biewald, draws its conceptual anchor from the French science fiction film La Fin Du Monde (1931, Abel Gance) and the behind the scenes documentary that chronicles the making of the film. The film’s plot involves a comet hurling towards earth, resulting in mass panic, orgies and natural catastrophes. Biewald’s installation makes direct references to the documentary and how it captures the sets, equipment and intense insanity of early era filmmaking. Biewald has a romantic urge to search for supernatural beauty in the natural world, searching for visual possibilities to express the essence of that “supernaturalness”. Historical landscapes are reimagined in provocative large-scale installation works inhabited by unique characters.

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Biewald will create a 10-foot motorized mirror ball for the exhibition, the shape is the combined form of the comet with the earth, light and video will project onto the surface of the rotating form. The resulting reflections will dart across wallpapered walls, patterned with a series of women’s faces - all real life Victorian performers and artists. The wallpapered wall will also be festooned with mirrors and phallic melting candelabras. This multi-layered mirrored space will place the viewer within the context of Biewald’s dreamscape, transforming their experience into both the viewer and subject. Her constructed world reflects outward, questioning representations of female actors and artists of the past as commentary to how the female form is still frequently utilized as object. Le Petit Mort further dissects representation of the female form, accentuating the more punishing aspects of Victorian society. The piece is a heaving pile of tattered ruffles with a pair of Victorian boots peaking out from underneath the layers. The piles of ruffles rise and fall struggling under the suffocating weight of excess. Both of these elements come together in Autour de La Fin Du Monde to create an immersive frenetic experience.

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Amelia Biewald received a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and Goldsmith’s College, University of London and her MFA from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. Biewald is represented by Magnan Metz Gallery in New York and is a current member of Rosalux gallery. She has received a Bush Fellowship, a Jerome Fellowship, a Smack Mellon "Top Picks" Award, NY, Grand Prize Juror Award for her work in Material Matters, MCAD, MN and a residency at the prestigious Skowhegan School. Amelia has upcoming exhibitions at Rosalux Gallery and Wassaic Projects.

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Images courtesy of Rik Sfera.

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