Sasha Shevchenko

07 First Impressions

What was initially meant to be a photo-documentation series of a performance has turned into a digital exploration of collage methodologies, and their ability to create a space for navigating the complex relationship between land and body.I like to think of these images as a digital archive or think space that explores gestures and frozen rituals which attempt to define what it means to leave impressions on the earth. An impression can be the lasting effect of experience, a material imprint, or a perpetual mental image. This term is key in beginning to tease out the nuances of developing a reciprocal human-nature language, where digital cut and paste methodologies can play with visual incongruencies that invoke potential experiences, gestures never made, and imprints unknowingly left behind.Treading between experience and memory, cause and effect, untouched and retouched, the digital realm brought its alchemic qualities to attempt a navigation of spaces in which we can never otherwise stand still.This realm, although only glimmering on the screen, brings a space for the consideration of how we make space, the marks we left, how to fill them, and the gestures we have not yet began to attempt.

“Watch what settles around us as we settle. Watch what keeps its shape against your palm, and what moves to invite it. A place of belonging is both a seen and unseen force. ”