A sculpture for performance. A large rock-like object strapped to a base on wheels that is to be wheeled up and down a street by a female gallerist on a daily basis whilst the work is exhibited.
The exhibition The Manicured Wild at Kristin Hjelegjerde gallery also involves a performance element, as Jokhova creates a giant rock sculpture, Sisypha. Strapped to a plywood board, it will be wheeled once a day up and down the gallery’s High Street, a metaphor for the human migration, for the struggle over land, finding one’s place, and how place can migrate within collective memory. The work also touches on the current plight of artists who are pushed of out cities due to gentrification and rise of property prices. 'Referring to all types of migration, economic, political, geographic, historical, Sisypha is simultaneously ‘home’ and ‘no place’ being carted around,' says Jokhova. The Sisyphean feat of endless movement extends to the ceaseless tasks of gallerists who take on these artists and their baggage, taking it to and from art fairs, temporary commissions, sculpture parks and so on. Encapsulating history in stone, the work references the eponymous Greek tale, and the human plight of endlessly working to conquer nature (both human and environmental) and our constant striving to perfect ourselves – that endless, hopeless task of seeking to manicure the wild.
Written by Anna Wallace-Thompson
Sisypha. 2017. Timber, polystyrene, plaster, concrete, acrylic polymer, filler, paint, stone effect, MDF, wheels, strap with hooks.
