Sandbag Body Bags

21 - 25 February 2024, 10am - 11pm

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This site-specific installation and endurance performance envisions sandbags as bodies, evoking the stark reality of flooding, erosion, and rising oceans due to climate chaos. The public performance involves the building of the sandbag/body bag formation and invites passersby to bear witness to, or participate in, the stacking of the sandbags. The completed Sandbags Body bags formation will be on view for the duration of the festival. The sensation of being near this massive stack of body-like sandbags intends to be unnerving and overwhelming, giving material reality to a threat that persists in feeling surreal.

 

Ava Fedorov is a transdisciplinary artist, writer, activist, and educator. Using art as an intersectional social practice of bearing witness, creating a record, and standing vigil, she pulls from all realms of her creative knowledge to portray disappearing places and the implicit nexus that connects internal and external landscapes. She creates large, abstract paintings; interactive installations; experimental books; and global performance pieces.

 

Ava’s work has been exhibited, collected, and published internationally and her short fiction has been a finalist for the Pushcart Prize and a PEN America award. Ava is an assistant professor at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design and the founder and president of CICADA (cicadaartists.org), an organization committed to amplifying the creative response to environmental justice and the climate crisis.