Daria Martin - Barbican Centre Exhibition

Daria Martin

"Tonight the World"

Exhibition at Curve Space - Barbican Centre

Daria Martin draws upon dream diaries kept by her grandmother over a 35 year period in this instillation work. Through film and gaming technology, Martin stages a series of encounters for her viewers, introducing them to her grandmothers interesting dream diaries and history of her grandmother, who fled Czechoslovakia during Nazi times.

The exhibition begins with an unsettling video game, where the user walks around alone inside fragments of her grandmother's dreams. As you move throughout the gallery space, you will take a dark corridor from one room to another and it feels as though you are moving from one memory to another. The darkness coupled with the long and curved walls feels particularly confusing, much like a dream. The way that the gallery is set up mirrors the theme of the entire exhibition perfectly.

She features a large wall displaying her grandmothers diaries as well which was compelling to read though a bit.

In the last part of the exhibition, Martin has reimagined five of her grandmothers dreams in a film. All the different dreams mimic themes of anxiety. For example, in one of the clips her grandmother is running through the woods being chased by hunters and she is singing at them to stop them chasing her. Sometimes the films can be almost pretty humorous, albeit unnerving.

I found this exhibition to be an interesting approach to dealing with memory in art, and intend to read further in Martin's ideas and processes. I her ideas could be helpful in igniting ideas about my own theme of memory in my FMP.