Virtual Connections: Together From a Distance by Everyone
Brown Paper Chair by Prerna
I am reminded of something a friend brought up, about feeling like they caught the middle of a movie when experiencing my work; not knowing what they had missed, unaware of when the end was, or where they were situated in the timeline.
I am focused on the process of making something, repurposing the materials and concepts, and repurposing them again. This creates a chain of projects that spill into one another, complicating and expanding upon my ideas with each new iteration. Using cheap industrial materials like drywall and brown butcher paper to create monobloc chairs, I have come to understand this chair as a symbol of ubiquity, soaked in familiarity from my upbringing. -Prerna (prernaunknown.com)
The Brown Paper Chair started from Today, we become, Prerna's exhibition at SooVAC in October-November 2019, starting with the remnants of that piece to begin anew. A cyclical process of repurposing the drywall used to create the walls in the exhibition, by printing it onto brown paper, and using that brown paper to mold onto plastic monobloc chairs. Success is in the process and the continuation of an idea, pushing past "failures" with even more resolve.
As I make yet another flimsy stack of brown paper chairs, the paper becomes a metaphor for myself and other brown bodies -- molding, enduring, persevering, and resisting. Through the cycle of watering and wilting, the stack exhales as it sinks a little closer to the ground. The top most chair looks like nothing but a sheet of brown paper atop many other sheets of brown paper. -Prerna
In this iteration of the brown paper chair, I was interested in using rain as the tool to mold the brown paper onto the plastic chair. The water from the rain would cause the paper to stick and mold to the chair, the wind would simultaneously blow the paper off the chair, and I would run into the yard to place —a now heavier, more torn paper— onto the chair. The brown paper chair kept tearing in the rain, blowing with the wind for 7 hours. -Prerna
Prerna is a multidisciplinary artist currently based out of Minneapolis, MN. Born in Mumbai in 1995, Prerna moved to Minnesota to study art and is now an MFA student at the University of Minnesota. She is interested in the idea of altering a physical space and then slowly returning it to it's original state as a critique of the norms of making and presenting in an institutional setting. Her work has been featured in local galleries such as The White Page, Swedish Bank Building and Casket Art Center, as well as nationally at LUMP Gallery and SNAG Gallery. Prerna received a Wayne Potratz Scholarship, Marjorie Finch Scholarship and a Joyce Lyon Scholarship in support her student work in 2018. She is also included in the collections of Goreman Rare Book Collection, Kansas City Art Institute, Southeast Missouri State University, Kent State University, Montana State University, Utah State University and Zuckerman.
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