Volte Art Projects is delighted to exhibit Yugen by Martha Fiennes, from 11th November - 12th December 2022. In addition to screening the artwork, the exhibition includes new, ancillary works by the artist, taken from the main Yugen project.

Within the prime arena of the gallery at Alserkal Avenue, Fiennes’ artwork explores the boundaries of a radical new media where art, digital technologies, and film practice fuse together to form new possibilities of creative expression.

In Yugen, the visual experience is resonant of a language of dreaming or out-of-body experiences and offers a meditative, other-worldly exploration into perceptions of reality and consciousness. Through technique and subject matter, Fiennes creates a dramatic evocation, stimulating worlds of the subconscious mind.

Fiennes brings to the project substantial experience of filmmaking, visual effects and digital media technology, resulting in a pioneering “hybrid” media with an almost fine art sensibility. The hybrid media utilises generative computer coding technologies to enable a continuous, non-predictable, self-selective visual display. The experience is further amplified by a hypnotic music and sound score written by composer Magnus Fiennes.

Fiennes describes her works as “visual evocations.” They evolve and mutate slowly while the work itself makes all decisions as to “what happens next.” The “narrative control” is therefore relinquished to the computer engine which powers the work.

There is no “looping” or repeat play as in traditional film and video, neither are there any hard “cuts” or edits. Each viewing encounter is spontaneous and unique and offers a highly meditative experience - we might even say the work is “alive.”

Yugen (2018), features the actor Salma Hayek Pinault and was premiered to wide acclaim
at the Palazzo Grassi during the Venice Film Festival 2018. Yugen has subsequently enjoyed high-profile showcases, including at The Serpentine Gallery during Frieze London where it was the subject of a discussion hosted by globally renowned curator Hans Ulrich Obrist.

In 2022, Yugen was Art Dubai’s inaugural digital commission to launch its new digital section. The artwork was shown to the public for the very first time during the fair.

It was showcased at LACMA for the inaugural Frieze LA in 2019, at Christies’ New York where it headlined the Art + Tech Summit in 2019, and the at the IMAX, The Science Museum, London, in 2019 where it was the centrepiece of an exuberant debate about the future of Art & AI.

About Martha Fiennes

Martha Fiennes is an award-winning filmmaker, writer and artist. Her multi-layered work is increasingly informed by technological developments in digital imagery and AI, whilst remaining resolutely the creative expression of a highly gifted filmmaker.

Fiennes has directed feature films including the sumptuous Russian period piece Onegin which won the Tokyo Film Festival and was nominated for a BAFTA for Best British Film. Her second feature film, Chromophobia, written and directed by Fiennes, was applauded for its powerfully contemporary style and closed the 2005 Cannes Film Festival.

More recently, Martha has been working on a new series of projects using a pioneering form of generative, technologies. Her first digital, moving-image artwork, Nativity (2011), has been showcased extensively - including an exhibition on a 23-meter exterior screen at The Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg.

About Volte Art Projects

Founded by Tushar Jiwarajka in 2009, Volte Art Projects represents and works on projects with renowned and celebrated international contemporary artists and collectives including:
Sheba Chhachhi, Francesco Clemente, Wim Delvoye, Ranbir Kaleka, William Kentridge, Mario Klingemann, Nalini Malani, Humans since 1982, SMACK, James Turrell, and Based Upon.

Over the past 12 years, it has achieved distinction as one of the most significant art initiatives in the Indian subcontinent. Today, following a move to the UAE, it envisions to become a leading gallery in the Middle East and aims to foster and evoke an experiential and creative milieu within the contemporary art scene, by showing works that often blur the boundaries between art, design, science and technology.

The curatorial programme will help introduce and realize large-scale and monumental projects by artists celebrated for their pioneering spirit of innovation, pushing boundaries, and harnessing latest technologies.

Image Credit: Martha Fiennes, Yugen, still from a self-generating, autonomous and continuous moving-image artwork, 2018