Butterfly Affective )):(( Re-Dressed & transFormed Legacies
2022
)):(( , 13 minute 17 second sample looped once, 2022
Note: The sound was designed specifically for the exhibition space (with the additional noise of foot traffic and other sound pieces entering the open space) with four speakers on a dual channel stereo set-up. The sound is meant to be played quietly and repeatedly. The sound piece features collaborative efforts with Clyde & their father, Tom Leonard. Sound Design by Michel Nölle.
Butterfly Affective )):(( Re-Dressed & transFormed Legacies
2021-2022
In the installation, Butterfly Affective )):(( Re-Dressed & transFormed Legacies, a soundscape quietly accompanies five paintings. The paintings transform masculine archetypes by layering, integrating, and dissolving these images onto themselves in natural environments influenced by the four elements (water, fire, earth, and wind), a metaphor for the feminine. A soundscape fills the room in waves, undulating between an ungendered chorus, the four elements, and near silence. The sound piece extends the paintings into another sensorial experience, surrounding the viewer underfoot, reflecting the same process used to create the paintings. The transitory setting is slippery and elusive. All at once the bodily and physical world are undistinguishable in their activity.
On one level for the artist, this work questions the stability of an archetype over time, choosing to imagine archetypes as malleable and personally defined. On another level, the artist chose to creatively approach the same stability of patriarchal legacy, offering a more personal narrative. The artist’s chosen name, Clyde, was a childhood nickname dubbed by the artist’s father and paternal grandfather. The artist asked their father, a scientist, to respond to the paintings in prose. These writings were read and recorded by the father and by the artist (imitating their father in sync). The voices merge, having been the altered to be ambiguously gendered, neutralized with effects and layered. By having the artist’s father participate in the project, it creates an opportunity for him to engage with the artist’s subjective & nonbinary experiences. The legacy of creation is not handed down, but rather coexists, as a collaboration. The artist and father converge in a process of adaptation and integration, not erasure. A transformative action.