17 February 2021 – 1 PM SLT
Milena Carbone about her exhibition:
“Scandal is a series of 8 pictures about the character of Iselin, an icelandic girl who becomes a Christ in the XXI century. It is my third story of a contemporary christ, after the Brazilian child in the exhibition Locked, and the mixed-race gay Mahdi in the exhibition Plead Guilty. This work will probably close my series of Christs.
Scandal is related to the theory of social violence of René Girard, a French anthropologist. He wrote a book called “Woe to the man through whom scandal comes” where he showed how Jesus Christ unveiled the role of sacrifice, and how the innocents are scarified.
During the exhibition, I will write the story and publish it in an SL e-book.
Scandal: a ballet on Philip Glass music
For my first time, I have designed a choreography of a ballet, based on Philip Glass music and SL ballet and dance poses.
I will show this ballet during the opening. It will last around one hour and is composed of 15 pieces of music, arranged in 7 parts. Each part begin with a text of Iselin. Most of the texts are inspired by the stories of my previous Christs.
The Church of light: part of The Carbone Gallery
For the staging of the exhibition, I chose to reproduce the Church of Light, designed by the famous architect Tadao Ando. The church will stay as a permanent part of the gallery, for exhibition, concerts, and prays.
I reproduced in SL the size of the church compared to the average size of an avatar. The textures, glass, concrete, and wood are also in keeping with the church in RL.
For me, the church of light is the most beautiful and smart Christian contemporary church.
The Carbone Gallery: entirely renovated
The exhibition will be held in the original Carbone Galley i opened less than a year ago. I seized the opportunity of the opening of this exhibition to renovate it entirely :
- the surface has doubled
- the welcome floor is totally new
- three to five exhibitions spaces
- access to all my exhibitions in other galleries“
Milena Carbone´s Bio
Milena Carbone is a French artist born in 1992 in Strasbourg. She has written and photographed since the age of 16. In 2010, she entered university where she studied psychology.
In 2012, her life changed. She met the love of her life which only lasted forty days. She reads the IPCC reports and realizes the risk of the collapse of civilization, sacrificed on the altar of ignorance and greed.
In 2013, she cut short her studies, and did an accelerated course in computer graphics. She worked for two years in an advertising agency, and in 2015 started out as a freelance graphic designer.
Between 2017 and 2019, artist friends encouraged her to publish her texts and to exhibit her photographs. She participated in two exhibitions of artists’ collectives where she presented photographs associated with short stories.
In mid 2019, she signed up for Second Life. She discovered its artistic potential and since then has devoted all her free time to creation, associating, as in real life, images and texts.
Milena Carbone is a fiction in which, as in any artistic work, biographical and imaginary elements are mixed.
Artistic Project in Second Life
Milena Carbone’s artistic project on Second Life is the continuation of her work in RL. Its specificity is based on anonymity, an important component of this virtual world.
By accepting the rule of the “double” (the real “I” and the virtual “I”), Milena Carbone includes herself in her artwork : she is fiction and questions her place in the world and the scope of her word.
By asking: “Who speaks in Second Life?”, Milena Carbone, author and fiction, returns this question to us in our real life: Who speaks ? How and why is it that an “I” appears capable of observing, from the inside, the universe that created it ? How can we ignore our ignorance to the point of destroying ourselves ?
How does our language, limited and discontinuous, lose us in sufficiency?
Her creative process is iterative: some of her images inspire her stories and these stories modify the development of the image, which itself transforms the story.
The phase of editing is very important. It combines the raw image of Second Life with a black and white layer and textures. These different photoshop layers represent, for Milena Carbone, “layers of meaning”.
The Recurring themes in Milena Carbone’s work
Her main themes are:
- The collapse of humanism, and even humanity;
- Fiction, reality and consciousness
- Poetry of science and spirituality;
- The advanced civilization of trees;
- The assumption that God could have been an alcoholic.
To feed her artistic project, she draws inspiration from science, psychology, philosophy and religions.
Her favorite subjects are female avatars and / or natural or urban landscapes. She rarely takes herself as the subject of her images preferring to discover model avatars with attitude.
Where to find Milena Carbone’s Artwork
The Carbone Gallery, which shows her exhibitions and guest artists.
The Carbone Gallery @ Noir´Wen City
Milena Carbone’s writing can be read on Medium
Welcome and enjoy the beauty of art!
