This project aims to explore the erotic in our local ecology through the senses. As we are expanding our relationship with this idea, the research will be performed as ritual. In our exploration, we will engage, photograph, document, honor, communicate, love, respect, and probably repel, objectify, disturb, dig, and misunderstand.
As we are moving our human bodies within our environment, finding connection and seeking meaning, can we recognize the erotic in entities around us? If the erotic is the nurturer of our deepest knowledge, truly collective, do we exchange information when touching a fruiting body or a tree? Are they also touching us? In creating art, are we objectifying our ecology for our human satisfaction?
Alena and Omri embracing eachother naked - Photographer Omri Roden and artist Alena Grahn explore the erotic in our local ecology through the senses. Photo taken by Omri Roden Alena Grahn. The sharing of joy, whether physical, emotional, psychic, or intellectual, forms a bridge between the sharers which can be the basis for understanding much of what is not shared between them, and lessens the threat of their difference.
We are always in deep relation to our ecology. Yet often nature is either idealized and purified or depicted as a threatening other. How do we decenter human narratives while recognizing, sensing, feeling the erotic in nature around us? The scent and feel of mossy forest soil just after it rains. What stories can non-human bodies tell, embody, communicate? How do our bodies entangle and move in fluidity with the more-than-human world?
As life partners enjoying a deeply erotic connection that inspires us to look beyond ourselves, we Alena and Omri will create a series of photographs and a sensory experience for the guests. We will need 3 weeks broken out over months to complete the research, photograph, print, and prepare the exhibition.
