Rodell Warner
‘ In Spirit’
This work is connected to isolation/confinement as it is made of expressions that really had no place in my real social life. I actually got a twitter account after being told to “go to twitter” in 2013 by a friend who did not appreciate my way-too-often status updates on facebook.
This work is very much related to the distance imposed by our lockdowns and new social distances. The need for an avatar has never been more ubiquitous – a stand-in for our real selves that can serve to represent us in situations we cannot be physically present for.
Essentially, this installation serves as an avatar for me, a way for me to create a presence where I am unable to physically appear. Hence the title: “In Spirit”. The work will serve an unending stream of texts like a stream of consciousness, like a poem that goes on perpetually.
I intend for this to be an ongoing exploration of possibilities in which to present myself, via online archives of myself. I am also considering the necessity here, in my absence, from this distance, of the creation this avatar and how, in the work-from-home/socially-distant/closed-borders moment that this is, an image of myself that can stand in for me where i cannot be, and one that represents me in ways I find supportive and interesting. It is simply something I need.
Bio
Rodell Warner (b. 1986) is a Trinidadian artist working primarily in new media and photography. His works have been exhibited at The Whitney Museum of American Art in the 2016 Dreamlands exhibition as part of the collective video project Ways of Something, and at The National Gallery of Jamaica in the 2016 exhibition Digital, and at the 10th Berlin Biennale in 2018 in I’m Not Who You Think I’m Not #14. Rodell is a recipient of the 2011 Commonwealth Connections International Arts Residency, and the 2014 summer residency at NLS Kingston, and was commissioned in 2017 to create the Davidoff Art Edition, a series of five artworks printed onto a limited edition of five thousand boxes of luxury cigars and presented and sold at Art Basel in Hong Kong, Miami, and Basel. Rodell lives and works between Port of Spain in Trinidad, Kingston in Jamaica, and Austin, Texas, in the US.
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