Poplar, walnut, inkjet print on cotton, muslin, pillow
32″ x 21″ x 21″
2019
For Berlier, the surface of the möbius offers a unique topology to research queer ecology–nonorientable and twisting everywhere. Orientation is a question of how we inhabit space and with what or whom; it speaks to the spatiality of desire.
Visually you can trace a path along each sculpture. What was the bottom is now the top, there is no front or back, the inside becomes the outside. Offering a path of reorienting to the world, turning things around so that what is seen in a particular way can be understood differently.
The möbius and landscape architecture’s idea of a ‘desire line’ are combined into sculptures that rest on a supple moss landscape referencing Berlier’s recent living and teaching in Kyoto, Japan. Both nature and queerness offer lush, vibrant, and soft landing places, a refuge if you will. The möbius forms are laborious, technical, embrace failure, and allow desire lines to evolve (unfold) throughout the forms.
