One woman’s written reflections on her personal journey with cancer have been transformed into an evocative multimedia installation at SITE 57 gallery in association with Bikini Edit. Stemming from notes written by artist Yuri Angela Chung, Notes To A Friend has expanded beyond itself, seeking to connect people who have been affected by cancer in one way or another and support the often makeshift communities that arise from a very concrete reality.
The multimedia installation will be up and running from October 4-31, with an opening reception on Saturday evening, October 7.
A collaboration with actress Embeth Davidtz, architect Jacqueline Park and creative technology studio Space Craft, Notes To A Friend: The Experience allows one to engage with the themes embedded in Chung’s notes in an immersive new way. Originally posted on Instagram, Chung’s notes are translated into large letterpressed prints. Blind debossed, the notes are pressed into the paper absent of ink, offering a transitory legibility through the relief of the impressions. Within the space, an audio recording of Chung’s notes being read by Davidtz plays on loop. Sound enables sight as Davidtz’s voice reading a note cues the note’s unique projection mapping to its presence in the space, the words filling with a form of dynamic “ink” that illuminates the note and allows them to be read as they are heard.
Sound becomes light and light becomes the conductor of space, guiding people through an experience that is at once intimate and collective, elevating awareness about a journey that is intensely personal and often solitary.
Chung’s journey already has a following. She was first diagnosed with cancer at the age of 25, battled it seemingly into remission only to have a recurrence at the age of 30. Her original Notes To A friend were well received on Instagram. To reach and positively impact others, she sought to bring her Notes to a bigger multimedia stage, launching a successful fundraising campaign and enlisting the support of Bikini Edit, among others.
In conjunction with National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, related events will also take place within the SITE 57 space. Showing concurrently are photographs from the Last Cut Project, a multimedia documentary project created by artist Samantha Paige, a young adult cancer survivor and BRCA1 previvor, with images by photographer Lisa Field. All proceeds from the show will benefit Young Survival Coalition (YSC), an organization dedicated to the critical issues unique to young women who are diagnosed with breast cancer.
Juliette Welfling Takes On A Musical, A Crime Thriller, Comedy and Drama In “Emelia Pérez”
Editor Juliette Welfling has a track record of close-knit, heartfelt collaboration with writer-director Jacques Audiard, a four-time BAFTA Award nominee for Best Film not in the English Language--starting with The Beat That My Heart Skipped in 2006, then A Prophet in 2010, Rust and Bone in 2013, and Dheepan in 2017. He won for The Beat That My Heart Skipped and A Prophet.
Welfling cut three of those features: A Prophet, Rust and Bone, and Dheepan. And that shared filmography has since grown to most recently include Emelia Pérez, the Oscar buzz-worthy film from Netflix. Welfling herself is not stranger to Academy Award banter. In fact, she earned a Best Achievement in Film Editing Oscar nomination in 2008 for director Julian Schnabel’s The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.
Emelia Pérez is a hybrid musical/drama/thriller which introduces us to a talented but undervalued lawyer named Rita (portrayed by Zoe Saldana) who receives a lucrative offer out of the blue from a feared drug cartel boss who’s looking to retire from his sordid business and disappear forever by becoming the woman he’s always dreamt of being (Karla Sofía Gascón in a dual role as Manitas Del Monte/Emilia Pérez). Rita helps pull this off, orchestrating the faked death of Del Monte who leaves behind a widow (Jessi, played by Selena Gomez) and kids. While living comfortably and contently in her/their new identity, Pérez misses the children. Pérez once again enlists Rita--this time to return to family life, reuniting with the kids by pretending to be their aunt, the sister of Del Monte. Now as an aunt, Pérez winds up adopting a more altruistic bent professionally,... Read More