Episode 1: Tribute to Lhasa
"Episode 1; Tribute to Lhasa"
2010
Rae Broyles
73" x 41"
Videographic Mixed Media on Dibond Panel
Video Element: 4:08 min. loop
Artists Statement about this work:
The original concept for this work and videographic painting came to me in 2011 while trying to incorporate my intense love for music, dance and various painting mediums into one work through which I could more fully express myself. Not realizing that simultaneously to my developing this concept, Lhasa De Sela, a Canadian born singer who was inspiring my painting, was battling cancer. Her music had spoken to me so deeply at the time but I had no idea how it would connect to the piece in its final stages.
In this work the dancer is moving through a simple space with prior direction as to my final vision of where the paint will be placed.
Then, after video editing, the painting is projected onto the surface of the canvas while I create the actual painting in unison to the visual movements. Therefore, truly incorporating her location on the canvas as she appears to be interacting with the painting itself.
I give full credit to her for this soundtrack and offer this project as a tribute.
About Lhasa
Lhasa de Sela (September 27, 1972 – January 1, 2010) was an American-born singer-songwriter who was raised in Mexico and the United States, and divided her adult life between Canada and France. Before cancer took her life, she recorded this inspirational story from her father entitled, "Some Day This Place Will Be Too Small"
This is a story about my father. Because my father is a very philosophical man, and he always has an idea going around and around and around in his mind and each idea that he has, its orbit takes several years to go around and when he's really gone all the way through, then he has a new idea. And these days he has a new idea. And his idea is that when we are conceived we appear in our mothers' womb like a little tiny light suspended in immense space and there is no sound. It's completely dark and time doesn’t seem to exist. It's like an ocean of darkness. And then we're growing. And we keep growing and growing. And as we grow, slowly we begin to feel things; touch things, and touch the walls of our world that we're in. And then we begin to hear sounds. And feel shocks that come to us from the outside. And as we get bigger and bigger… the distance between ourselves and that other outside world becomes smaller and smaller. And this world that we are inside which seemed so huge in the beginning and so infinitely welcoming has becomes uncomfortable. And we are obliged to be born. And my father says that birth is so chaotic and violent… that he is sure that at the moment of birth we're all thinking "This is it. This is death. This is the end of my life." And then we are born. And it's such a surprise. Because it's just the beginning. And in the beginning, we are very small. And the world seems infinitely big and time seems infinitely long. But then we keep on growing. And we learn how to use our senses and we learn how to touch one more time; contours of the world that we're in. And sometimes mixed in with the sounds and the sensations of this world we hear sounds and feel shocks that come from yet another world and that other world … this follows us our whole lives long as if something is happening just on the other side of a very, very thin wall. But we can forget about it for a long time and the all of a sudden it comes again and at the end of our lives we are obliged to die and at that point my father says that then we think we are really smart and we think this time we know for sure that this is death and this is the end because everybody knows that. But my father thinks that’s that not the end either. It's just the beginning of something else.
LhasaDe Sela "Soon this space will be too small"
– Spoken before her death Jan 1st 2010