Brazilian’s artist to premiere first UK exhibition

Daniel Lie’s first UK solo exhibition The Negative Years will be unveiled to the public in Scotland this weekend.

The opening weekend of Jupiter Artland Foundation’s 11th season, one of Scotland’s leading arts organisations just 20 minutes outside Edinburgh.

The exhibition will use both indoor gallery and outdoor spaces at the sculpture park to create five immersive site-specific installations utilising raw materials sourced from the Jupiter Artland landscape.

Combining organic sculptural forms with sound and proposition of experiences, the exhibition is a process of experimentation which will shift and transform throughout its lifespan creating what the artist describes as a ‘geography of emotion’.

From vast accumulations of live flowers gradually decaying, to traditional ceramics slowly cultivating native fungi and spaces physically heated by bio-digestion heaps, Lie’s visceral environments play collaboratively with natural processes and showcase the artist’s interests in ecology, ritual and cycles of life and death.

Founding director of Jupiter Artland Foundation, Nicky Wilson said: ‘Daniel’s use of organic materials sourced from Jupiter to create both indoor and outdoor installations perfectly embodies Jupiter’s values as a place where landscape and art meet. This has been an exciting and inspiring two-year collaboration with Daniel, and I know the whole team here at Jupiter are looking forward to seeing how Daniel’s work will develop and change over time.’

Quing by Daniel Lie, at Jupiter Artland (Photo: John McKenzie/Jupiter Artland)

Quing (2019) occupies the main exhibition space. Using turmeric paint, mushroom spawns, decaying organisms and columns of straw, the installation invites audiences to consider the decolonising of science and processes of power providing a space for non-human life to happen.

The work extends outside of the gallery to display a bio-decomposer heating system which the artist has created in collaboration with a team from Jupiter Artland to explore how the organisms can create energy whilst growing and decaying.
Unable to Destroy (2019) considers violent processes of power by drawing upon the rich history of the local area and in particular the trails of witchcraft that took place in close proximity to Jupiter Artland. In this work the artist has created two large wooden poles to create a gateway to the exhibition in a memento to the stakes that were used to trial witches persecution.

For The Others’ Privacy (2019) the artist has used wool collected from sheep at Jupiter and 10,000 cut flowers to create a 3-metre column, that hangs from the ceiling, slowly twisting and changing shape as audiences move through the space. The artwork is accompanied by an intimate sound installation, creating a multi-sensory experience.

Being Alone, Together (2019), located in the Dovecot at Jupiter, uses a single bell to create a site of meditation, allowing the viewer to ring the bell in their own time and reflect on memories and the other organisms growing within terracotta vases in the space.

The final artwork, To Mourn The Living (2019), uses a combination of charcoal paint and a jute sack of mycelia and straw which is covered in activated linseed and flowers, reflecting on how life and death sit side-by-side. Each installation is filled with the smell of the organisms growing and decaying and Lie also plays with natural light to lead the viewer on a journey of self-discovery.

Inside Daniel Lie’s Quing (Photo: John McKenzie/Jupiter Artland)

The exhibition is a result of two-years of research with Jupiter Artland Foundation, local archaeologists, mycologists and students from Design for Change at Edinburgh College of Art, a multidisciplinary programme addressing the environment and concepts of post-humanism, through ecological and design-led approaches.

Artist Daniel Lie said: ‘To create this exhibition I collaborated with non-human beings such as the fungi queendom, bacteria, plants, elements, spirits and deities. I understand that they are the protagonists of the work.

‘How can these others beings give us agency? How do they communicate with us once they don’t share our word-centric language? With the invisible layers that are also present in the spaces can we think about a geography of smells, sounds, emotions, and even a geography of agencies?’

Daniel Lie is a Brazilian-Indonesian transgender artist born in Sao Paulo whose work spans the disciplines of installation and the hybrid languages of art. Using ‘time’ as a starting point for their production, Lie develops works which question tensions between science and religion, ancestry, the present, life and death.

To highlight the passing of time, Lie works with organic matter subject to decay such as plants and fungi. Daniel Lie’s commission for Jupiter Artland runs until 14 July 2019.

For further information and to book tickets please visit JupiterArtland.org.