John Di Stefano: Inter/Section

Civic Square, Wellington, November 5th-18th 2003
Proudly sponsored by Big Image Print

From the artist's statement

Inter/Section is a public art project that engages with the history of Wellington. The artwork is conceived of as a meditation on the lives of those citizens who have lived in the city and whose trajectories through it have imprinted it with a history.

The viewer's perception of Inter/Section shifts with proximity to the cube. The dark images imprinted onto the surfaces of the cube depict details of the street life which existed on the site across the late-19th and 20th centuries. The live reflection of passers-by activate the work, literally superimposing the past with the present. In this way, Inter/Section becomes, literally, an intersection or node into which, and out of which, is overlapped and reflected the transformation of this urban site. Inter/Section is a continuation of Di Stefano's recent work, which engages with the notions of displacement, history and identity by examining how perceptions of memory, space and time shape the articulation of subjectivities.

John Di Stefano, (BFA, Concordia University, Montreal; MFA, UCLA; PhD, Concordia University, Montreal) is an interdisciplinary visual artist/videomaker, writer, curator and educator. At present, he is a Senior Lecturer and Director of the Postgraduate Studies programme at Massey University School of Fine Arts in Wellington. He has exhibited his work extensively over the past 12 years, participating in numerous exhibitions, including several one-person shows in Canada, the U.S. and Europe, as well as film & video festivals in North America, Europe, Asia and Australia.