Trisha Baga

Incorporating 3D video, theatrical lighting and carefully staged objects, the series of installations entitled Plymouth Rock (2012) are a literal and metaphorical representation of the layering and consequences of human history. As it travelled between London, New York and Dundee, the artist adapted each manifestation of Plymouth Rock to reflect the identity of each new setting. Although playfully engaging, Baga's practice addresses the role of both grand and personal narratives in an increasingly homogenized society.

Flatlands 3D tracks an individual as she navigates the collapse between her own interior space and a landscape of simulation. In one sequence, the video's background perspective is first an aerial view of a rainstorm from the window of a plane, then it shifts to a close-up shot of a puddle lapping up rainwater, and finally to a shot of a highway landscape passing by a car window, as rivulets of water pour across it. In another, a hand carefully measures a clear blue sky with a plastic ruler, the artist muttering “huh" under her breath.

The body interacts with this background as though it were a Photoshop document, the environment is cut and pasted like a jpg to suit the subject's spatial aesthetic. Baga's persona lives in a space that is completely controlled by its subject's desire, malleable to her own internal compass as she pursues some inexorable journey to make sense of the fragments.