Koiman, 1998 Installation: cast concrete, plaster, rubber latex, motor oil, pump, mount of dirt painted blue, projected
video, sound. Courtesy Space 1181, Atlanta, GA. Photo: Reis B.
Koiman, 1998
An octagonal cast concrete basin shaped like an early Christian baptismal font, is filled with continuously overflowing used motor oil, which is
spilling over the rim and cascading over the slanted floor. Beyond the river of oil and reflected it is a video image on the far wall, being the only source of light, showing two
androgynous figures, almost motionless, one kneeling and suckling at the breast of the other, covered with a tarry substance. Though both are nude, the framing makes genitals invisible,
and it takes time to eliminate the possibility that the standing figure might be female. The space is filled with the prerecorded sound of trains, being switched and linked near by the
site of the project. Outside the space a mount of dirt and industrial leftovers painted blue has became the background for the video scene.
Koiman in Greek is "to put to sleep" or "to put into a coffin."
Initially working in drawing, collage and painting, Weiss has begun to embody her ideas in multi-sensory installations. In "Koiman" she has negotiated the visceral and meditative
intensity of the space and reflected on ideas of memory and the self. [Cathy Bird, Toxic Ritual,www.artnet.com, New York, 1998]
The sheer sensory power of the sculptural form, the noise, and the odor make this a work that haunts imagination in disturbing and ultimately productive ways. [Jerry Cullum, Monika Weiss,
Sculpture, 1999, pp. 72-73]
"In Koiman the site indicated the evidence of the leakage and of the state of transition, as both metaphorical and immanently present. The temporary, the leakage are states of
passage, states of transgression. In that state of being ontologically insecure as body and self, there is a potential opening towards the unknown, the uncanny, the other. Behind
my work is a believe that boundaries of identity (self/body) are liquid. Between the self and the other is a fluid space called body. It is on the edge of recognition of space
and time that something important happens. Gendered body is an ambiguous construction. The corps is an object constantly negotiated under the influence of mapping its terrain.
It is a changing space, it's a gap. I think the space (physical or political) is like body: it has undefined boundaries and a sensitive flesh. The space understood as the site
and body as locus - are interdependent and containing each other." (Monika Weiss)
