"Mariposa" (Butterfly) - My latest KONZEPTION Installation for the novel "Humboldt's Riches" - PART 1

As of October 12th, I am officially underway in my KONZEPTION cross-pollinating literature and art project.  "Se Vende" led into the theme.  "Prologue" served as the page of inception.  Now "Mariposa" begins to introduce some of the main themes in the novel, which I can't wait to start wrestling with over the next few months.  I will talk more about naturalism and Alexander von Humboldt, the Prussian explorer who inspired the title of my new book, in the next post.  For now I will leave you with this description and images from the new art installation.

The subject is Amazonian butterflies: mariposas.   The installation depicts them as biological nomenclature hovering amidst a lattice-like net and sculptural 'foliage', to which cling crystalline vellum butterflies, transparent yet veined with white ink and pencil.  In "Humboldt's Riches", the main characters are a family of young biologists who have journeyed into Peru's Apurimac region to run an uncle's hacienda hotel, with the idea of continuing their study of butterflies there.  Once arrived, they endure the hardships of living in this remote wilderness and start to see hints of the impending dangers that will catapult them into the novel's adventure,  Yet all the while they cannot resist delving into the forest for their quarry, the variety of vibrant papilios, some rare and uncatalogued, as large as their spread hands. 

Note: my parents were equally obsessed with capturing and cataloguing butterflies and moths (and a fair share of insects) while we lived in the rainforest.  I grew up with these frames, which traveled with us from Peru to Germany to the United States, even when other important objects (all my baby toys spring to mind) were left behind.  As a young girl in Munich, my parents even raised a specific species of domestic butterfly, just to see it hatch in the thousands in our small studio apartment...but more on that in my 'Germany' book)

The installation, as seen presently, offers a depiction of this butterfly theme.  Only when the novel is read months down the line, will the installation offer a different perspective on the subject, begging the question of who is being chased, who exactly is trapped in that lattice-like net among the sculptural green???

 

 

 

 

 

KONZEPTION: My New Literature/Art Project Unveiled!

Be the first to read up on my new series KONZEPTION, an unprecedented literature/art installation project, recently unveiled on August 10th, 2013 and scheduled to last through Summer 2014 with the completion of "Humboldt's Riches":

 

 

KONZEPTION – a cross-pollinating literary fiction and art installation project – aims to make a novel visually manifest by interpreting its creative process concurrent with its evolution, from inception to publication, through works of cut-paper sculpture and mixed media visual poetry installations.  The art works become inextricably linked to the written word with the novel’s opening lines, which are composed within the first piece in the series “Konzeption: Prologue”.  Subsequently, as the writing process continues, the novel’s themes and events inform new installations, while they in turn serve as springboards and incubators for later chapters. 

 KONZEPTION marries Carola Perla’s prose work with her sculptural ‘Lichtsprache’ – lighted cut-paper sculpture and visual poetry installations.  She created her first installation, “Off the Page” (2011), as a direct reaction to the hermetic process of writing her debut novel “Gibbin House”.  Her desire to visually celebrate the completion of this book led to further exploration in ‘lighted’ words and cut paper that incorporated published text as well as in situ ‘poetry chants’.  KONZEPTION  picks up where “Off the Page” left off, examining the birth of the novel instead.  The source here is the in-progress literary fiction novel “Humboldt’s Riches”, a semi-autobiographical Heart of Darkness that follows a young family’s escape from the remote Amazon region of Apurimac during Peru’s 1980 guerilla uprisings.

 

“Konzeption: Prologue”, written in a similar way to other ‘poetry chants’, sets the stage for this South American adventure story.  Breathlessly, it describes the dangerous task of driving in the Andes.  As a spontaneous composition, the prologue cannot be amended.  With no space for error, the artist is much like the Andean driver, maneuvering on a knife’s edge, aware that each carved word will irrevocably form part of the novel’s opening scene. Above the lines hangs the second sculptural element of the piece, a theatrical curtain that introduces this story.   Ruffled and fragile, with lace-like lattice cuts, the constructed white ‘curtain’ is meant to work simultaneously fragile as well as imposing and precarious in its weight and irregularity. Like an avalanche, with its frayed layers casting craggy shadows, the curtain portends the nebulous beginnings of something.

“Konzeption: Prologue” was unveiled on August 10, 2013, officially launching the KONZEPTION series that is projected for completion in summer 2014.  A special-edition photo book documenting the KONZEPTION project will be released as a companion to "Humboldt's Riches" upon publication.