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For immediate release Contact SEEfest at: vera@seefilmla.org
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Caryatids: Multimedia Exhibition of Nataša Prosenc Stearns
Opens March 21 at Mauro Café on Melrose
Los Angeles, March 2024 – Slovenian-born visual artist and filmmaker, Nataša Prosenc Stearns, will present her latest works, Caryatids, a collection of large prints featuring architectural columns which take the form of the standing female figures. The exhibition, which runs from March 21 to June 16, at Mauro Café, 8112 Melrose Avenue, is organized in collaboration with SEEfest, the South East European Film and Cultural Festival.
Caryatids digital video iterations have been released on the digital platform Sedition*, mintable as NFTs.
Taking the motifs from ancient Greece, and Acropolis of Athens, Caryatids represent the power and endurance of women. This project brings the idea of caryatids into our time with silhouettes of women layered with elements of contemporary Los Angeles architecture.
“I am excited to share these images with L.A. audiences,” says Nataša Prosenc Stearns. “Once immobile female pillars now beam with turbulence, wind in their hair and clothes. Confirming their significance in today’s changing gender landscape, they resist the confinement of the orthogonal masculine shapes of the architectural grids. They no longer carry buildings and decorate facades; they connect the sky and the earth, confirming their role in a cosmological integrity.”
Says Evelyne Joan, proprietor of Mauro Café, “It is very meaningful to me to be able to showcase this collection of Prosenc Stearn’s photographs that explore the role of women as pillars of community. As a woman and owner of an iconic food and hospitality establishment in Los Angeles, I have always been an avid supporter of local artists. It is a privilege to celebrate Prosenc Stearn’s artistic achievements especially in concurrence with International Women’s Month.”
As noted by the academic Stefan Mattessich, “Prosenc Stearns, like Yeats, approaches the problems of modern subjectivity by situating it (and us) in the deeper historical contexts of an ambivalent “civilising process.” Where Yeats, in “The Second Coming,” dates this process from the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem, Prosenc Stearns takes us back to classical Greece, to the myths and principles that still today underlie what it is to be a person who is autonomous, self-governing, and “free” in the (categorical) imperatives of an exigent and intimate self-discipline—one beginning in an infancy as much our own as it is that of the modernity we live, and live less as a secularizing break than in continuity with our pre-modern past.”
The opening artist reception will take place on March 21, 2024, 6pm – 8pm, at Mauro Café, 8112 Melrose Avenue, Los Angeles, CA.
About Nataša Prosenc Stearns
Nataša earned her BA at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana. She moved to Los Angeles on a Fulbright Grant for her MFA at California Institute of the Arts. Her body of work ranges from single-channel videos, video installations, short and feature films to prints. She explores innovative strategies in storytelling and visual expression and is known for creative use of non-gallery spaces and large multi-channel installations. As an exiled female artist, her areas of artistic exploration include alienation and identity in a technology- and profit-driven environments. By layering moving images, she has developed a singular visual language that integrates seemingly unrelated spaces and figures. It also allows her to explore another of her favorite topics – the interconnectedness and unity of all things.
Nataša’s work has been shown internationally, including at the Venice Biennale and at numerous galleries and museums such as the Douloun Museum of Art in Shanghai, the ARCO Fair in Madrid, the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, the Circulo de Bellas Artes, Madrid, and the Museum of Modern Art in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Her videos and films have been screened at festivals such as SXSW, Films de femmes Paris, AVIFF Cannes, the Brooklyn Film Festival, and the Chicago Independent Film Festival. She is a recipient of The Soros Grant, The Durfee Grant, The European Capital of Culture Grant and The Prešeren Fund Award – the Slovenian award for outstanding achievement in art. Her videos are also featured in the contemporary opera CodeL.
natasastearns.com
About Mauro Cafe
Mauro Cafe is a neighborhood restaurant and Los Angeles destination with Italian roots and Californian influence. As an all-day, European-style cafe in the heart of West Hollywood, it is committed to supporting local food purveyors offering the freshest ingredients possible, and continuing to engage with and advocate for organizations that address food insecurity throughout Los Angeles with events and pop-ups at the restaurant. Evelyne Joan, the heart of Mauro Café and its proprietor since 2001, grew up on a farm in rural France. Her deep knowledge of the restaurant industry is rooted in three decades of experience including a culinary background at Le Cordon Bleu. Evelyne has consistently been involved in many aspects of the local food industry – from managing well-established restaurants and catering to dedicating her time to organizations that address food insecurity and youth programming in Los Angeles.
maurocafe.com
About SEEfest
SEEfest is a competition festival devoted to the presentation of cinematic and cultural diversity of South East Europe to American audiences, creating cultural connections through films, artistic and social events. It was founded in 2006 by Vera Mijojlić, long-time film critic and cultural entrepreneur.
About Caryatids
Caryatids is a multimedia project, consisting of 12 photomontage prints 32” X 19” (6 examples: https://www.natasastearns.com/prints) ; 42 digital video iterations released on the digital platform Sedition, and mineable as NFTs (https://www.seditionart.com/natasa-prosenc-stearns/caryatid-s-collection) ; a video installation (https://vimeo.com/236305452).
The project is accompanied by an essay by Stefan Mattessich, Ph.D.: https://www.seditionart.com/magazine/natasa-prosenc-stearns-caryatids-1
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* Sedition is the oldest digital platform, also featuring works by Jenni Holzer, Yoko Ono, Bill Viola, Shepard Fairey, Rioyi Ikeda, Christian Boltanski and Wim Wenders.
