Holy River is a multimedia exhibition by the New York based artist Prune Nourry and curated by Tatyana Franck. Sculptures, installations, photographs and videos will take over the entire ground floor of the Invisible Dog. The Holy River exhibition is the culmination of a three-year project on gender selection focused on India. Mirroring the Holy Daughters exhibition that took place in 2011 in Paris around the theme of Milk, the flowing theme of this show is water. It features a selection of works inspired by a performance Prune realized last year in Kolkata.
In August 2011, Nourry commissioned a team of artisans from Kolkata’s potter’s district to create a monumental (17 feet) hybrid sculpture inspired by the design of her earlier Holy Daughters, and made from Ganges clay in a traditional style. Then in October 2011, during the Hindu festival «Durga Puja», this imaginary deity infiltrated the procession of thousands of Hindu deity figures. She was carried through the streets until the Ganges bank, where she was finally returned to the river from which she was born. The Holy River sculpture juxtaposes the symbol of the woman and cow’s sacred fertility, with the holiness of the Ganges river – purifier and source of all life. Yet, similarly to the mistreated cows and girls, the river is highly polluted and taken for granted. The deity, fruit of Nourry’s imagination, not only encourages to reflect on sex selection in Asia, but also brings awareness to the growing lack of free, clean water, and the religious, social, political and ecological issues that arise through both these important subjects.
Conjoining with the diverse layers of Nourry’s art, performances throughout the exhibition will feature a special sensory experience in the artistic merging of dance curated by Simon Dove and performed by Preeti Vasudevan, sound by Mitchell Yoshida, smell by Olivier Delcour, taste by Michael Hamilton.
Curated by Tatyana Franck with the support of Sophie Ubald Bocquet.
Opening reception: Saturday May 12 from 6 to 10pm
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