The Art/Life Institute
KINGSTON, NY 185 Abeel Street
A Performance Art Residency, Gallery and Project Space
NINA ISABELLE
PSYCHIC
SELF-DEFENSE:
GIANT WOODEN STAKE
FOR DESTROYING
PSYCHIC VAMPIRES
OPENING RECEPTION MAY 1 6-9PM 185 ABEEL STREET
GALLERY EVENTS
Opening Saturday
Saturday, May 1st 6-9pm
Mid-Month viewing
Saturday, May 15 6-9pm
Closing Reception
May 29th 6-9pm
Gallery hours: Saturday & Sunday By appointment
Email: info@artlifekingston.com
Nina will offer 42-minute healing sessions with the Psychic Self-Defense healing sculpture on each of the above dates. Email nina@ninaisabelle.com to sign-up for a session.
There are seven available slots per date.
The Art Life Institute is a performance art incubator, gallery space and exhibition venue located in the historic Rondout neighborhood in Kingston, New York.
For more information: info@artlifeinstitute.com
195 Abeel Street, Kingston NY 12401
Nina Isabelle is a process based artist working with perception, action, language, and phenomena. Her practice is a method to sort and solve the inconsistencies of language, perception, memory, and phenomena. She makes paintings, drawings, photographs, video, sculpture, sound, performance and writing as inquiries into how sensory perception functions as the impetus for action, reaction, response, and choice making in art and life practices. She often crosses and merges disciplines as she explores how sensory experiences form concepts, inform thought progressions, compel action, and the unconscious and conscious impact these variables have on decision making processes used to construct meaning and worlds.
Her work has been presented at The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts in New York City, The Queens Museum as part of Emergency Index Documentation Discussion, Judson Memorial Church, Grace Exhibition Space, and ABC No Rio in Exile at Bullet Space in NYC with Feminist Art Group, as well as at Para//el Performance Space and The Ear in Brooklyn, NY. Internationally, her projects have been presented at Czong Institute for Contemporary Art in Gimpo, South Korea, The Unstitute in Catalunya, Spain, Bangkok Underground Film Festival in Thailand, and NA Gallery in South Korea, as well as nationally at The San Diego Art Institute, The New School's exhibition at The Bushwick Collective, Roman Susan in Chicago, IL, and CX Silver Gallery in Brattleboro VT, among many others. Isabelle received her Bachelor's in Art from Westminster College and graduated with honors in 1999. She credits the progression of her process and approach to the lives and work of artists, writers, and thinkers including Susan Langer, Linda Montano, Hilma af Klint, Sasha Morgenthaler, Ray Eames, Käthe Kollwitz, Louise Bourgeois, Nelson Goodman, Noam Chomsky, Paavo Pylkkänen, and Willard Van Orman Quine.
In 2018 Isabelle founded Three Phase Center for Collaborative Art Research & Building in Stone Ridge, NY where she facilitates, collaborates with, and documents the work of process based conceptual and performance artists.
Website: www.ninaisabelle.com
Instagram: @nisabel
Art Life Institute is excited to present Psychic Self-Defense, a new work by process-based artist, Nina Isabelle, on exhibit for the month of May.
Motivated by the failure of dialogue, the dissonance between form and content, the imposition of objects in space, as well as the deficiencies of literal language, Nina’s projects highlight how modes of psychic imprinting and cerebral interpretations come together to organize perception in ways that can inform and solidify new possibilities.
Nina was rereading Dion Fortune's book Psychic Self-Defense:
The Classic Instruction Manual for Protecting Yourself Against Paranormal Attack, published in 1930 at the same time she was grappling with how to move a nearly-dead forty-five foot tall white pine tree on her property that would have been hazardous to nearby structures if it fell. Although daunted by the task to take the pine down, once the job was completed, Nina saw an opportunity to use the tree as a tool for psychic self-defense by turning it into a huge wooden stake.
Nina designed, built, and activated the tree into a large healing sculpture for neutralizing the effects of psychic vampirism and other unhealthy energetic connections that impact our wellbeing. The eleven-foot long trunk carved to a point, is a giant cleansing machine; it targets energetic fields and tethers that become attached to our etheric bodies over time. It's meant to obliterate unhealthy energies and connections, and prohibit vampiric energies from sinking their fangs into the multiple dimensions of our psychic, physical, mental and emotional spheres.
Additionally, Psychic Self Defense is intended to be an aid for our times; to destroy the parasitic relationship dynamic vampires establish and maintain with our bodies against our will and most often, without our awareness. The exhibit includes photographs, drawings, video, sound art and a written directive for people who want to interact with the sculpture and have their own healing experience by standing in front of it and connecting with its design.