Ouroboros (For Kekulé) (2019) invites viewers to participate in the absurd action of trying to control the speed of infinity by riding a stationary bike that faces a projected animation. The speed of the participant’s pedaling controls the speed of the animation’s playback, which depicts an ouroboros of interlocking plastic containers. It is named for the scientist who discovered how to visually represent benzene, a component of plastics, while supposedly daydreaming of the mythical snake eating its own tail.
A Flood of Feelings (2019) is an edition of 60 hand-pulled silkscreen and relief prints on found reproductions of Jan Breughel the Elder’s 17th century painting of animals entering Noah’s ark. The silkscreened text comes from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ Doomsday Clock, which considers climate change in its calculation. The pink “reaction words” were chosen by exhibition visitors in a participatory printing process. Half of the sale price of these prints is donated to Houston-based Texas Environmental Justice Advocacy Services. To purchase a print, contact the artist at julialandois[at]gmail.com.
These works were created during my 2018-2019 residency at Lawndale Art Center and featured in citysinging, the residents’ culminating exhibition curated by Laura August in June 2019. Laura wrote an excellent essay for our catalog, available at Lawndale.
Suburban Labyrinth is a walking meditation labyrinth, constructed using wood salvaged from home debris piles following Hurricane Harvey. The painted path design is inspired by the often labyrinthine street maps of Houston suburbs, scaled to approximately 19 x 22 feet. This piece was originally commissioned by the Luminaria Contemporary Arts Festival in San Antonio, TX. I had planned to make the sculpture out of salvaged wood long before the storm, thinking about the endless sprawl of Texan cities, the waste cycle of construction, and the irony of slowly traversing on foot a map made by the culture of cars.
Then the weather changed everything.
The materials in the piece come from my own badly flooded neighborhood, where the idea of being “trapped in the suburbs” took on a terrifyingly literal meaning as boats floated down our street and neighbors lost their homes. Among the labyrinth pieces are the walls of closets, kitchen shelves, and disassembled IKEA furniture. The sculpture became a labor of love, an homage to my new home and the neighbors who helped care for my family and so many others.
julia barbosa landois 