Marie Gayeski: elemental

Juanita Kreps Gallery
Duke University Center for Documentary Studies
On View: March 22 - April 13
Gallery Hours: 10:00am - 6:00pm
Artist Talk: April 13, 2:00pm

elemental addresses the transitioning of the body in form and matter. After experiencing lifelong genetic illnesses and a Category 5 hurricane that destroyed my family's home and business, I searched to find peace, acceptance, beauty and connectedness in life, death, the forces of nature and the Cosmos. My work emerged from trauma, the recognition of reorientation and survival. I asked myself: How do you cultivate a sense of belonging and re-association with nature in the face of natural disaster and death? How do you go back to what is primordial, the elements and forces that create and destroy everything in the Cosmos? How do you move past your physical body and accept yourself as a being in transition? I believe all is not destroyed by nature but continually enveloped and recreated by it.

The exhibition consists of large-scale archival pigment prints and an experimental film. The work depicts the Five Platonic Solids in their elemental form: Water, Earth, Air, Fire and Ether. Still images and video were purposefully composed and manually shot in camera utilizing only water, plants, sand and light. No filters were applied to the still images in post-production.

Our connective tissue is the glue that holds our bodies together much like the Cosmic Web is the scaffolding of the Cosmos. Seeing the relationship between our bodies and the Cosmos has been a healing force in my life.