Fondation

Nesting is a public engagement project developed by Marlon Kroll in conjunction with the exhibition Stan Douglas: Revealing Narratives.

Inspired by the sensations of inhabiting a body, Nesting is an installation conceived to be experienced from two points of view. Inside the PHI Foundation’s Education room, visitors will encounter tall partitions covered in oilskin, an archaic waterproof coating that is achieved by brushing layers of linseed oil and beeswax on canvas. While the gestures carried out to produce it mirror the act of painting, oilskin evokes an impenetrable flesh-like membrane, in this case covering a built structure whose insides, like a body, cannot be seen from the exhibition space. Outside, from the vantage point of the street, looking in through two of the Education room’s windows, Nesting shows itself in a different light, revealing a situation that emanates from the interior of the installation.

Through this project, Kroll reflects on notions of transformation and the materiality of being, and the ways in which architecture limits access, either by creating a singular point of view or by imposing physical limitations on space.

CREATIVE ACTIVITY
Kroll’s installation will serve as the basis for a creative activity, which will be offered to groups after a guided visit of Stan Douglas: Revealing Narratives, as part of weekend workshops. Echoing both the recursive nature of memory and his installation, participants will each be invited to draw, from memory, a key moment of their lives, and through “visual telephone,” translate these drawings into something entirely new. By drawing something after the fact, instead of recopying it directly, the activity evokes Douglas’s translation of historical facts through the act of photographic (re)presentation.