ART-PRESENTATION: Daria Martin-At the Threshold

Daria Martin’s 16mm films aim to create a continuity or parity between disparate artistic media (such as painting and performance), between people and objects, and between internal and social worlds. Human gesture and seductive imagery meet physically mannered artifice to pry loose viewers’ learned habits of perception. Mistranslation opens holes for imagination to enter or exit.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Maureen Paley Gallery Archive

In her solo exhibition “At The Threshold” on presentation at Maureen Paley Gallery, Daria Martin presents her latest multimedia work including her latest film, “At The Threshold”, the second 16mm films of a a trilogy by Daria Martin inspired by mirror-touch and begun with “Sensorium Tests” and continues with “In Theatre of the Tender” (working title). The films are inspired by Martin’s research into a form of heightened physical sensitivity called mirror-touch synaesthesia. People with this neurological condition feel a palpable sensation of touch on their own bodies when they see another person, or even an object, being touched. While synaesthesia has inspired artists, composers and writers for centuries, mirror-touch is a recent discovery that offers new perspectives on the relationship between the social and the visual. “At the Threshold” was written by Martin in collaboration with playwright Simon Stephens and theatre director Joseph Alford and uses thirteen interviews with mirror-touch synaesthetes as material. “My 16mm films aim to create a continuity or parity between disparate artistic media (such as painting and performance), between people and objects, and between internal and social worlds. Human gesture and seductive imagery meet physically mannered artifice to pry loose viewers’ learned habits of perception. Mistranslation opens holes for imagination to enter or exit”. “At the Threshold” is a melodrama provoked by the question: “Can a mother experience too much empathy for her child?” A movie’s fight scene batters such a synaesthete, a glimpse of a father hugging his child imparts the sensation of warm, encircling arms. Many people with the condition also experience mirror-pain, mirror-cold, mirror-movement, mirror-breathing, and mirror-emotion, extending the sharing of senses to a kind of blurring between self and other. Martin aims to capture some of these feelings and ideas in the structure, words, and images.

Info: Maureen Paley, 21 Herald Street, London, Duration: 30/1-13/3/16, Days & Hours: Wed-Sun 11:00-18:00, www.maureenpaley.com