Marie Bannerot McInerey’s, Trace Me Back curated by Alejo Benedetti and Victor Gomez, lives in allegorical reference to the Greek mythos love story of Orpheus and Eurydice. The mythos describes Orpheus as a charming man who is gifted a lyre from Apollo, and whose melodies could not be resisted by enemies or beasts. In a magnetic attraction, Orpheus falls in love with Eurydice, a woman of beauty and grace, whom he marries and lives with happily for a short time. McInerey’s experiential, site-specific installation creates a somatic response to this lore featuring an acoustic, ambient sound collaboration with Bill Reiter alongside sixty-seven silk organza panels, and a concrete-coated textile centered on the wall containing the shadow of the LED lights place behind the center of the silk veils on the opposing wall. Bannerot’s work creates a physical paradigm of time. Filippo Marinetti’s Manifesto of Futurism, declares “the splendor of the world has been enriched by the world of beauty: the beauty of speed.” The will to see things to completion in this exhibition balances gender performance within the loop of this narrative invoking beauty ad infinitum.
Upon entering the long gallery, sound pushes the viewer to find its source through the convex arc. The ambiguity of the sound and the opacity of the panels create the illusion of the underworld described in the myth. Subsequently, I begin to question my relationship to time. The modularity of the organza panels subjects my body to pantomime in the reimaging of this narrative. The ambiguity of shadowed figures interacting creates a mirage. Seams in the panels have asymmetrical hemming, as the artist has chosen to tear the seams and reconstruct them, creating a feminist, reversible density. The raw edges paradoxically suggest an estranged relationship between utility and impermanence.
In the mythos Orpheus loses his significant other and is tasked with retrieving Eurydice from the underworld with the condition that he may not look back to confirm her presence. Reimagining the mythos, the veils of organza alternate cool and warm light throughout the abstracted work. The stationary panels suspended by tension rods are juxtaposed to the body’s movement within the installation. Vertical alignment of the suspended panels in the space creates a grandiose feeling despite the path being physically narrow, further contributing the sense that the installation symbolizes a rite of passage.
Passing through the veils, the ambient sound builds. When I move closer to the middle, the the panels are placed closer and closer together. The movement represents time acceleration while I attempt to locate the source of the sound. Being subjected to these time shifts, the light source stands in for the sun. Centering the absence of the woman in the lore, the work questions if linear time ceases to exist without her. Time itself is seemingly broken, as this is not the end of this exhibition.
In this architectural, time-based work, Orpheus must confront the karmic gravity of forever in the underworld without his significant other. The cautionary tale of Orpheus and Eurydice typically grapples with the presence of a woman. Time here, however, is only conveyed through one’s own physical presence. Orpheus’s inability to process his attachment to time results in his pause and looking back, which sentences Eurydice to the underworld for all eternity. This is reflected by the exhibit ending with the last of the panels returning to the same sequencing of the veils at the beginning of the journey. From the concluding perspective, the body’s enduring performance is captured.
