Embrace The World From Within - Thought-Provoking art installations by Louise Bourgeois, Miles Greenberg, and Yoko Ono
Embrace The World From Within features the works of Louise Bourgeois, Miles Greenberg, and Yoko Ono. It “revolves around physical and metaphorical aspects of the embrace” (information text from the exhibition).
The exhibition is placed in three rooms, each of them dedicated to one of the artists. As you walk into the first part of the exhibition, you find yourself in a dark room with only a bench to sit on and a large rock in a glass cube. This is Miles Greenberg’s performance “The Embrace”. There, two people blinded by white contacts, sit on the rock very close to one another, in an intimate connection. As time passes, visitors can see how slowly these two people become one, how they get emotionally and physically closer, almost merging into one another.
Unfortunately, the performance is only live on Saturdays, so if that is what interests you more than the other two parts of the exhibition, make sure to come on that day.
If the live performance is not necessary for you, you can see it projected on the wall in the room throughout the day every day.
The second room leads to Yoko Ono’s gallery. It consists of two installations, “We’re All Water” and “Ex It”. The first work presents 118 bottles filled with water, each having a name of a famous or infamous person on it. “We’re All Water” makes you think about our similarities. No matter the status, job, nationality, race, gender, or anything else we see as our differences, we are all the same, we are all people.
Yoko Ono’s second installation was the most memorable and important for me personally. The room is filled with coffins, big and small, with different plants growing out of them. The installation represents the connection between life and death. These two concepts intertwine becoming one. The installation makes the idea of death less frightening by showing us that where there is death, there is also life, and there wouldn’t be one without the other.
The third and last room presents works of Louise Bourgeois, spanning through the 1960s to 2000s. The artist used different materials and different shapes to show the inner conflict through her sculptures.
Embrace The World From Within is located in Faurschou, Greenpoint, and can be viewed through September 17th, 2023. The entrance is free.
Article and photos by Mary Zakharova