Our first post in the DISPLACEMENT Issue dedicated to art / photography has arrived! We’re excited to introduce to you the wonderful work of Beatrice Pediconi, a multimedia artist whose work utilizes a hybridized technique to explore tendencies of flux, displacement and disorder in both the natural and human worlds.
Her perspective is informed by the status as an Italian immigrant: she grapples with what it means to be American, and the distortion of self that results from assimilating into the cultural fabric of the contemporary United States.
Pediconi entitled her work Gaea in reference to the Ancient Greek personification of Mother Earth. “Born of Chaos but as Chaos receded, Gaea came into being – complete in herself.”
The transformational process that emerges from destruction into light is at the core of this series.
After a trip to New Orleans, Pediconi was struck by the abuses of the land from water.
“I saw how much in that land is felt the double aspect of water: life and death. I felt the desire to use my painting- photography based water-technique with the intent of re-creating aerial view of ocean and land impact who could evoke this double aspect of beauty and destruction.”
The creation of Pediconi’s work stems from a desire to explore the interrelationship of adaptability, the intrinsic need for stability, and the desire for equilibrium in response to disruptive motions. Gaea explores those relationships. Each image, an aerial view of the contamination of water, seeks to evoke the beauty inherent in disorder, to portray the tension between chaos and equilibrium, the inevitable proliferation of life in its myriad forms.
Pediconi’s work explores the dissolution of boundaries and the inevitable push towards renewal. The Polaroid process is critical to the creation of this series: this rare, dynamic medium perfectly matches the semi-permeable interaction of the subject elements. Unlike discrete digital photography, the Polaroid process is that of an image being “painted” onto a canvas. The mediums are perfectly wed in that one augments the other’s intended effect of suspending time. As the painting dies, the photograph comes to life.
