Catinca Malaimare
LO Sodium, 2020

Feathers aflame the Seraphim hid his face with two of six great wings, blue irises glimpsed through the fire, concealed and observant. Angels, ethereal as the metaphorical Cloud we fill our misunderstanding with, absorb our intimate lives, perching guardians ready to intervene, fed on a diet of data.

Reconsider the screens surrounding you, the laptops, smartphones and TVs, the watch that counts calories and the integrated display adorning your washing machine. See them for a second, as appendages and facial features chopped up and bandaged back together, designed to convenience our lives. Stone lions poised at the foot of a temple, barking push notifications. The Cherubim with four faces and a cloak covered in eyes, the medieval equivalent of a smart home infused with an internet of things.

LO Sodium confronts us with the uncomfortable reality that our machines are dance partners, closer than we are ready to admit. Flanked by slender stage lights, barn doors opened on a mesh laced low pressure sodium light, she performs a clambering embrace lifting herself upon her collaborators’ frames. Bodies parallel and mimic one another, design ideologies slowly becoming entwined.

And you, as a spectator, interrupt an intimate caged moment, by staring directly down the camera lens and becoming an incidental voyeur and accidental desktop choreographer. You become the final performer, with whom the artist shares a single fourth wall breaking glance, completing a complicated network of actions that brought these films and images to your screen.

Words by Pitta Arreola-Burns and Elliott Burns.
LO Sodium was exhibited as part of Catinca Malaimare’s solo show with Off Site Project.