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Unconscious Lens Press Release

BOSI Contemporary

Unconscious Lens was a group exhibition curated by Roya Sachs, featuring works by New York based artists Najib Aschrafzai, Rosanna Bach, Mike Fernandez, Gabriele Giugni, Alison Nguyen, and Anh Thuy Nguyen. The show revolved around Freud’s theory of the Unconscious – the source of our most instinctual desires that are repressed and released in our dreams. Each artist attempted to explore the different realms of the Unconscious and Conscious world, by demonstrating the different visions, techniques, and concepts of their optical lens. A black line was drawn across the space to represent the line of consciousness, the works traveling in the two opposing realms.

On the opening night, 27th August 2014, there was a unique performance of La Mamma Morta, an aria from Umberto Giordano’s Andrea Chenier, performed by opera singer Mithra Mastropierro and contemporary dancer Katherina Tsirakis. Contextually, the opera first premiered in 1896, one year after Freud’s first big publication, Studies on Hysteria. Katherina is the subject in Rosanna Bach’s photographs, bringing her works to life through the performance. Its purpose was to stress the dual existence of the Unconscious dream world, which Mithra sang about in the aria, and the reality of the Conscious world, which Katherina's movement and physical presence represented.