INNER SPACE, an immersive journey
Jessica Plumb, Aura Shahaf Woelfle, and Michelle Mackenzie Felsenhardt
Artist Talk: Wednesday, April 24, 2024 | 6 pm
Building 305, South Gallery
On View: April 8-26, 2024
Mon, Tues, Thurs, Fri from 11–4 pm and by appointment (lpratt@centrum.org)
Centrum is very pleased to announce an exhibition by the artists Jessica Plumb, Aura Shahaf Woelfle, and Michelle Mackenzie Felsenhardt as part of its new In the Making residency program. Inner Space is a large-scale, interactive installation artwork that invites viewers on a journey through light, video, audio, hanging fabric and suspended glass. This journey offers an invitation to consider the most universal of human experiences, mortality and impermanence, with creativity and curiosity.
The project began as a collaboration between three artists: filmmaker and producer Jessica Plumb, glass artist Aura Shahaf Woelfle, and Chilean photographer and musician Michelle Mackenzie Felsenhardt. This team envisioned using immersive art to explore the mystery of our brief human experience and the “inner space” available to all of us, regardless of circumstance.
The installation is strongly influenced by Michelle’s journey of living with cancer, an illness she described as a “crash course” in questions that get lost in the vortex of everyday life. In her words: “something unexpected happens: the dark seed of despair can open a crack into something that is so big that it can only be touched by your soul: it’s the journey into the center of your heart where your holy spark dwells…”. She died while still working on this project, which also explored her complex Chilean and Polish heritage. An expanded artistic team continues to draw inspiration from her words and visions.
Structurally, visitors enter the installation along a path of shimmering moonlight. A suspended corridor leads viewers along this path of light into a wider circle. Michelle’s creative practice included printing cloth from abstract photographs, designing fabric imbued with story. This material shapes the space, and within an inner circle, hanging fused glass pieces connect worlds above and below. Video projections, combined with light and shadow, conjure visions of a liminal space between worlds.
While participating in Centrum’s In the Making residency, the team plans to broaden the inquiry that launched this project. The artists write: “We all make and remake our lives in recognition of limited time, and awareness of mortality. We invite the experiences of others, as we build a larger piece imbued with questions and experiences we bring to this unknown journey. The artwork is designed to be interactive, and we expect it to grow and change while installed at Centrum. The piece we install initially, while large, will become greater still with each visitor who leaves a mark. Those who choose will have a chance to let something go. We hope you will join us for this experience, and bring your own light to our most universal, and mysterious journey.”
The creative team for the Centrum installation includes Jessica Plumb and Aura Shahaf Woelfle, as well as New Mexico-based artist Jessica Krichels, and David Plumb, Michelle Mackenzie’s partner for two decades.
Jessica Plumb is an award-winning filmmaker, writer, and interdisciplinary artist who crafts nonfiction stories infused with wonder and a strong sense of place; she is best known in Jefferson County for the feature documentary Return of the River, the story of the Elwha River dam removal.
Aura Shahaf Woelfle is a Brooklyn-based glass artist, sculptor, jewelry designer and multimedia teacher, who combines glass mediums “to enable something dynamic, alive, and surprising to emerge outwards from within.”
Michelle Mackenzie Felsenhardt was a Chilean artist and therapist working in multiple creative mediums as a singer, photographer, and creator of image-printed fabric and fashion, informed by an exploration of her complex roots as well as her journey with cancer, which took her life at age 44.