Participative Structures

Ana Rewakowicz is a Polish/Canadian artist. For her monumental, interactive, multia-media, site-specific installations, in which processes that take place in nature play a significant role. She works with natural elements such as water, ice, air and plants, as well as such ephemeral materials as inflated plastic and latex. She uses these elastic, transparent materials, such as recycled polymers, latex and vinyl as something like a ‘second skin’, drawing attention to the vulnerability as well as the flexibility and resilience of the human body. Central to her interest are topics of growth, energy, nature, ecology, light and movement. Rewakowicz implements her objects in collaboration with various research centers, physicists, biologists, architects and the like. Her work cuts through science, technology, visual art and performance. She is occupied with Utopias and experimentation.
She placed her interactive installation The Cloud, which will float freely in space, in the Šamorín Synagogue. Using narrow tubes and small hand pumps with one-way valves, visitors to the exhibition space can fill concealed compartments in the cloud with water from bottles placed on the floor. The accumulated water in the cloud causes the object to descend. When the cloud is filled with water, it will begin to “rain”, the object is discharged and becomes lighter, and begins to ascend. The artist perceives the cloud as a symbol of elevated aspirations and dreams, which may in this way be symbolically fulfilled by our own efforts. It is also a metaphor for direct human impact on the environment. The possibility of creating rain offers a direct vision of the transience of atmospheric conditions.