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MAXINE HEPPNER : CREATIONS

AIR

description of work

AIR

February 1998 Depok Indonesia

Site-specific installation collaboration in the flooded rice fields of Depok village, Indonesia. The title was a play on the English and Indonesian meanings of "Air".  "Water" in Indonesian, the piece was inspired by the flooded rice fields, and the quality of light and colour in the humid Air (English), that reflected on the water. The thick brown mud of the sawa and the reflected sunlight was the canvas for Indonesian visual artist Hanafi, dance artist Maxine Heppner and photographer Cylla von Tiedemann's performance piece, orchestrating the pools of colour to flow up into the suspended cotton, float on the thick water and buoy the dance.

This was the final of a series. Maxine and Hanafi had already collaborated in indoor gallery time-based installations when Time slowly dyed long sheets of suspended raw cotton whose ends were soaking in iron and leather pans of pure pigment. The deep colours seeped upwards slowly transforming the cloths into sheets of colour. The leather pans also leaked so over the week's installation the floor was eventually pocked with brilliant pools. The natural performance of Time, Paint and Cotton was accompanied by the human intervention of Hanafi's replenishing the pans with paints and adjusting their locations to rebalance the changing visual weight of the space due to the natural dying . Maxine's dance submitted to the paints' instincts to cling to skin, hair and clothing, and to the trace marks that her movements left on the cloth and floor.

credits

AIR : Credits

Collaborating Artists

Hanafi Muhammed (paint)
Maxine Heppner (dance)
Cylla von Tiedemann (photography)
children of Depok

Production

Studio Hanafi

with support of

Ballet Sumber Cipta
Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs

 

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media gallery

AIR : media gallery

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