Miwa Matreyek: Merging Performance and Projection

                                                 Miwa Matreyek 

Merging performance and projection 



"Infinitely Yours"

(click the link)





Miwa Matreyek is a visual artist that specializes in collage style animations. Her work, which she calls the “tangible, illusionistic, and physical conflict between man and nature” touches on topics like global warming and pollution. Her signature style is layering animations with live choreography. She captures her interpretive dancing behind a screen, as she moves in front of a projector, creating a shadow image of herself that has a projected image superimposed over it. Her method of layering animation with real time projection creates a palpable experience for the viewer.


 During her Zoom presentation at CSUF, I asked how she manages to stay in time with her animations while she is behind the screen with an audience watching. She said she uses various tactics, part of her success is due to practice and memorization, part is due to the use of markers and mirrors. Either way, her method of projection superimposed over live choreography is something that is unparalleled to any contemporary art that I have seen.

Her first animation, done when she was in college at California Institute of the Arts, is Digitopia(2005, linked below). Here, she uses her body to express a connection between the earth and humans. She superimposes collage style backgrounds with recordings of her body parts, like her eyes and hands, as parts of the earth. This work was the beginning of a long career for Matreyek using her body and animation together to make commentary on our connection to the planet.


Her most recent piece, Infinitely Yours (linked above) follows the same formula of animation layered with shadow images of her choreography. This 25-minute film  focuses on a dreamlike version of how the media depicts climate change. It touches on topics like wildfires, air pollution, and plastic in the ocean. Matreyek addresses climate change in hopes to start a necessary conversation amongst her viewers. This film illustrates the destructive relationship that has been formed between nature and humans in hopes of stimulating a sense of empathy and responsibility for the impact that we have on the Earth.



Digitopia 

(click to watch)

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