Minna Squire
Edge of Bliss, 2023
Cast iron, steel, wood, hammer tone paint, multichannel video, performance; bowl - 1m cubed. Video- 5 channel projection, scale variable
The ball and bowl (kinetic sculpture) explore the paradox of utopia, the elusive, perfect society, often imagined but never realised. The ball embodies the personal and collective human struggle. Each generation participating in the repeated ritual of re-imagining. The cast iron bowl, a strong and durable medium which can also decay and crack, rotates the ball, never allowing it to settle or find balance. The ball never stops moving, never reaches a stable point, never achieves utopia, but always rolls at the edge of the bowl, at risk of spinning out of control to its destruction.
The dreamscape is a series of five video projections surrounding the Ball and Bowl sculpture that whisper of the imagined futures I dream of realising. On set, I facilitated the performance of a collective yearning for loving, expansive, empathetic futures. Through the portrayal of expanded queer kinships, unrealistically rendered in theatrical dreamscapes, the work rejects the current structures that can make hoping and dreaming feel pointless or naïve.
'We are looking for permission to dream again' (poem and performance) is a manifestation of hope for a more joyful and compassionate future: Squire shares personal and collective struggles and dreams with the participants and viewers through poetry and performance, hoping to create a space for connection, community, and empathy. Minna invites you to imagine and dream of alternative ways of being and relating in the world.
Minna (they/them) invites audiences to engage in conversation about their personal histories, desires for a better world, and the collective, seeking to create a space for diverse perspectives and ideas to emerge and coexist. Minna cultivates unfamiliar but nurturing contexts through installation to provide a moment where the viewer might feel safe and still enough to reengage with their innate desire and capacity to imagine and hope.
Drawing from their queer experiences of kinship, Minna seeks to explore the possibilities and limitations of individual and collective agency in shaping the future. They begin their re-imagining from within their own community with the hope that as they come together to heal, grow, and imagine in new ways, this hope might radiate outwards helping to realise more empathetic, collective, and accountable futures.
