Parallel Lines • 15 Minutes of Fame

- an ongoing series of photo-based encaustic paintings (subjective "happenings" with a prison bed), and:
- an interactive sculpture installation entitled 15 Minutes of Fame featuring the bed and suitcase depicted in the paintings.

15 Minutes of Fame

- an interactive installation created and facilitated by Amanta Scott, featuring:

• a bare prison bed (from the former Kingston Penitentiary for Women)
• a prison blanket, sheet & pillow; and,
• a standard-issue prison suitcase containing assorted personal items . . .

Visitors are invited to: open the suitcase; consider, select and arrange items upon and around the bed to create a new installation -a personal artistic statement about incarceration - then: present and discuss their installation with other visitors write about their installation in the Book of Fame, which is on site and open for everyone to read. Other visitors are invited to write comments about this and other installations in the Book of Fame. Each installation remains on display for a maximum of 15 minutes. Installations are documented through digital photos and posted subsequently online.

the concept . . .

Parallel Lines • 15 Minutes of Fame is a series of photo-based encaustic paintings (subjective "happenings" with a prison bed), with an interactive sculpture installation entitled 15 Minutes of Fame featuring the bed and suitcase depicted in the paintings.

Artist's Statement:

Years ago I met a Cree youth who told me that within sixteen years he had been through fourteen foster homes. He felt unloved and unwanted. "One day," he told me, "I was so depressed, I threw a shovel through a jeweller's window: I knew at least I'd be wanted in jail."

His story stayed with me. Years later I was given an opportunity to create works with prison beds. This arose through an art commission in which I was invited to create artworks utilizing waste from government buildings. Correctional Services Canada asked what I could do with discarded prison beds. I was intrigued with the challenge. With the youth's story re-sounding in my mind, I took a prison bed around the city of Toronto and engaged photographer John Davidson to document a series of my live solo performance ‘happenings’ through digital photography.

The photos, printed on archival paper, are mounted on birch panels forming a base upon which I apply layers of encaustic (wax) paint to create imagined possibilities blurring the boundary between painting and photography. The original photo captures only a partial version of reality - aspects of the location, mood and lighting. I delve into the image to exploit the tangible but not captured on film, the invisible possible inner life beyond the borders. I fuse the lines between reality and imagination, the actual and the possible, real and remembered, the inner and outer worlds. The result is a series of evocative and deliberately ambiguous photo-based encaustic paintings exploring choice as a determining element in our lives.

Parallel Lines is the third project in a series of works featuring prison beds reclaimed from the former Kingston Penitentiary for Women and previously slept upon by an array of disturbed and occasionally notorious women.

see also:

LockDown

history

Parallel Lines • 15 Minutes of Fame has been exhibited and presented in a variety of contexts since 2005.

In 2004, Amanta received a commission to create sculptures with waste from government buildings, including prison beds from Correctional Services Canada. The resulting series: LockDown, and 15 Minutes of Fame premiered at the Art Gallery of Algoma in 2005, open to the general public during a six- week exhibition and presented in workshop events to women in shelters and youth from juvenile detention centres, as well as to school groups.

One juvenile delinquent returned to the gallery a week after his visit asking to ‘do’ another installation and include a photograph of himself and his family, which he felt should be placed in the empty picture frame found in the suitcase. Here was a kid who’d never been in an art gallery before in his life, who’d been moved to such a degree that he felt compelled to return and invest himself in the artwork.

•••

In 2008 Amanta was selected as a featured artist in ScotiaBank Nuit Blanche, curated by Wayne Baerwaldt with 15 Minutes of Fame and the first stages of Parallel Lines. The work garnered over 2600 visitors throughout the evening. People were lined up around the block all night long. For 12 hours non-stop she introduced the work; facilitated discussion amongst people of all ages and cultural backgrounds; and watched delighted as participants actively engaged and interacted with the works.

In one instance, an unassuming little South Asian grandmother approached the bed and commenced a silent enactment of grief and confusion depicting the experience of being incarcerated against her will, of having to choose between her children and having to leave one behind when suddenly and inexplicably released from prison. The audience was riveted. Afterwards, in halting English, with the help of a translator, the woman elaborated on her performance. Speechless, the audience, gave her a standing ovation.

Later a wheelchair-bound woman created an installation and described a horrific journey to hell and back: a road accident with a drunk driver left her paralyzed, she lost her job as a paralegal, ended up living in a shelter, lost her kids, lost everything and hit bottom. Finally she started climbing her way back up. Now she is studying to be a social worker counselling the homeless.

In June 2009, UNHCR presented 15 Minutes of Fame as an exhibit and outreach event for refugees and immigrants in World Refugee Day Toronto.

Parallel Lines • 15 Minutes of Fame also featured at Cube Gallery, Ottawa; and Living Arts Centre, Mississauga in 2009.

Parallel Lines • 15 Minutes of Fame will be exhibited at FIMA, in Montreal, July 2011.

looking back . . .