Ali Cherri’s "How I Am Monument" has been developed in partnership with Vienna Secession. The exhibition at Baltic is the second, expanded chapter of this collaboration, and the first major institutional presentation of the artist’s work in the UK.
ArtAV’s exhibition design team worked with the Baltic curatorial team to ensure the ideas and presentations of the two audio visual works were technically possible. The exhibition needed to be approached with a level of thought as the triptych of projection screens for Of Men and Gods and Mud would be presented in the middle of the space, surrounded by Cherri’s magnificent mud sculptures, which themselves would be lit. A solution that was not only powerful enough but also as minimal as possible so as not to take away from any other physical installations. The exhibition "How I Am Monument" looks at history through a material lens. Cherri’s recent mud-based sculptures take inspiration from archaeological artefacts and the natural world. Relics, sourced from auctions and antique markets, are grafted onto mud bodies to create hybrid beings. Cherri uses mud as both a material and a metaphor for creation. His video installation Of Men and Gods and Mud (2022) further explores mud’s creative power. The film The Watchman and the installation The Seven Soldiers (both 2023) visualise the impact of military discipline on human bodies in times of conflict, while other related works consider how natural elements, such as vegetation, bear witness to historical trauma.
To combat the unusual amount of light in the main space for a projection, higher powered 12,000 lumen Epson projectors were used. Suspended from a truss, ArtAV’s large stock of the Epson lens suite ensured we had the correct lens for the throw distances. Playback was from an ArtAV Hypersync Playback Rack; the Hypersync kept the Blackmagic Hyperdeck players in sync across the exhibition day. Audio was a Fohhn 5.1 system using a LEA Connect Series Amplifier, allowing the install team to commission the audio work from a position in the space where the audience would listen to the work. For The Watchman, which was situated in its own cinema-like room in the alcove at the rear of the L4 space, a lower lumen Epson projector was used, and a Genelec 5.1 sound system offered super clarity for the delicate audio that accompanies the fantastic visuals. To ensure the maximum playback quality, a Blackmagic Hyperdeck was used for a ProRes 422HQ version of the work; keeping the high data rate for this piece was invaluable as it features such subtle gradients and dark tones in its excellent cinematography.
