Randi Matushevitz Rocks Her World

Randi Matushevitz’ recent residency at Shoebox Projects invited viewers into an installation that was it’s own world. Like many of the artist’s recent works, her images here were layered, socio-political, filled with the energy of our times. “My images explore the psychological dichotomies of dark and light, the tension of anxiety and fear, and the quietude of contentedness and assurance,” Matushevitz remarks.

Her work is designed to immerse her viewers in a reality they may usually refuse to acknowledge, to draw them into a visceral conversation about “the fact that many of us live in a state of illusion, where entitlement, safety and security are only a barrier to hide the disparity and inhumanity that others live.”

The haves, the have nots. How many of us have what we really want? How many of us appreciate what we have? How many of us walk in the shoes, sleep in the bed, see through the eyes of those who have little or who tread a thin line between the comforts of home and hearth and the cold of the streets.

“The goal of my Shoebox Projects Residency was to find the thread that runs through all of my art projects. I connected this residency to my previous installation Conundrum, thinking about cultural fear,” she relates.  “I began with the horrors of homelessness and looked deeper into the darkness of the other, the invisible, and illusions of safety to find that I am interested in pointing to the connective tissue of being human, without race, gender or culture.”

As she worked, however, she says her sense of purpose and the strong linear poetry that suffuses her work, both shifted.

“My ideas evolved as I had real and hard conversations, the tent, my shelter, became a space where all thoughts co-exist. I realized the crux of my artwork is, and has been, to point to human equity. ”

So rather than depicting a habitation that was outside many viewers experience, she dug deeper into something more inclusive, yet riven with intense hope and dread.

“I created this space, where the coexistence of all thought exists, contrarian and temporary, to reflect the nature of life itself.  This space is fragile yet strong. It has been constructed, deconstructed and re-organized from cardboard, wallpaper, string, clamps, personal ephemera and phrases that represent the emotional and contrary inner workings of our minds.”

Matushevitz’ process in creating it  was dynamic and highly visceral. “I cut, punctured, tore, only to tie and clamp the fragments back together.  The divisions mimic the physical, social and psychological walls that often divide and separate community and individuals; only to counter these barriers with ideas of commonality, safety, love and joy.”

The most overriding sensation in viewing this installation was of being deeply involved in the world she created.

“This work is my first to focus on viewer engagement. The viewer is prompted to walk through, sit in, add images or phrases to the whole, to recognize shared human experience.”