Almost there, but not there yet, 2018
C-prints on sheer polyester, dimensional lumber
Sculpting New Reads, The Word On The Street: Book & Magazine Festival
Harbourfront Centre, Toronto, Canada
Curators: Labspace Studio (Laura Mendes & John Loerchner)
09.21.2018 - 09.23.2018
The title, Almost there, but not there yet (2018), draws from Emma Healey’s poem ESPER from her second collection of poetry-prose, Stereoblind. Filled with uncertainty and existential questioning, Healey articulates the common feeling of precarity and in-betweenness that many people experience while living in large, sometimes isolating urban centres. Healey describes the layered and sometimes incongruent reality she experiences and suggests how the power of the creative gesture can remedy life’s absurdity - a shared driving factor in DiCarlo’s practice. On page 10, she states: “I want to make something that climbs, pivots, arranges a way to work the past against the present and reverse them both. I want to tell you history is nothing…”.
In Almost there, but not there yet, the concept of temporal liminality becomes known through a series of to-scale images printed on sheer fabric that depict a half-open door taken during a 24-hour period. Displaying a range of natural light through the day, the images are installed vertically in constructed doorways within a larger “light-framed” structure using dimensional lumber – a nod to the in-flux state of a home’s construction.
Healey’s emotional understanding of the past, present and future as non-linearly fragmented, folded and always in a state of flux resonates the most with DiCarlo’s work. As a visual artist who has devoted her practice to expressing the malleable qualities of time, Healey’s poignantly described imagery and rich references to time offer DiCarlo a natural thematic entrance for visual interpretation. Healey’s recurring mentions of broken mirrors and their fragmented reflections, palindromes and their fluid directionality, and how psychological interiors at the threshold of public realms all evoke a world where lived temporalities express the intersecting tension between the was, now and will be.
