ART ON THE MART
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There’s a real sense of pride and acknowledgement that my community – the people in the city – are respecting and giving my work a platform”
soundscape to accompany the art display Fernandes had designed. “I invited Shaun to be a part of the project,” says Fernandes. “He’s a good friend and I know his music well. I gave him a sense of what I wanted – we talked about using textiles and the connection to my African history and Kenyan heritage. Shaun decided to bring in some African beats partway through it. He even convinced me to sing on the piece, so my voice is actually featured, which I didn’t really want to do because I’m not normally a singer. Shaun is, but I love that he encouraged that little inclusion. I never usually put myself in my own work, but when I was instructing the dancers on how to do the hands, they also asked me to include my hands too. So I have these little cameos throughout the piece.” BRIGHT LIGHTS, BIG CITY Symmetry on the building face was something of which Fernandes was very conscious. “You also need to consider the projectors,” he goes on. “This is thinking about the labour of the actual projectors and the ambient lights of the city. Light is such a weird factor in cities depending on the season, so I’m grateful that it’s during autumn. We do get darkness at an earlier time of day, but we’re also in a bustling city.” Fernandes also considered the colour palettes, as certain colours look better than others on the building. “Another factor is that photographic realism doesn’t project well on the building, which is why I choreographed the dancers in a green room and made them into silhouette composites – so it could be more graphic. I was really going through my graphic sensibilities – my love for textiles and patterns – and trying to challenge and understand the space.” When it comes to projection mapping and digital art, Fernandes believes there will be much more of it in future. “I see it on buildings, especially for advertising,” he observes. “I think there will be these interventions of art spaces; I’m excited to play with it and create something that is an intervention to a new mass audience. You see more and more of it in our every day, often on phones, so it doesn’t have to be large scale, it can be small too. “I love Chicago and it’s my home,” concludes Fernandes. “There’s a sense of pride and acknowledgement that my community – the people in the city – are respecting and giving my work a platform on which to be seen. I’m personally extremely proud of the work – the way it has manifested and done what I wanted it to do for the project. “I’m especially grateful for the collaboration with Daily Planet and my producer, Domenic Del Carmine. It’s something I hope to do again in other iterations and forms. I love the time basis of it as well, that it’s an ephemeral, public thing. I hope it becomes a monument for that moment, but then changes and becomes something different.”
The Build Up the House installation pays homage to house music, which is 40 years old this year
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