Bridget Modema: I am love (2021), sonic-sculptural art installation, glass, steel, light, and sound
My artwork explores the relationship between frequency vibrations and subtle emotional memories. With influences as diverse as Masaru Emoto’s experiment of spoken affirmations onto water and sonic-installation artist La Mount Young, new variations are crafted from both constructed and discovered layers. Ever since I was a child I have been fascinated with the unseen realm of interpersonal communication and bodily awareness. Before falling asleep strings of coloured spots and shapes would circulate the room as I drifted off into a dream. The memory of my father often brings tension and disillusion with his background in the South African military system, he often resorted to violent behaviours and a complete denial and shame for emotions. My father passed away when I was thirteen years old where his memory remained, but the journey of exploring emotions realised. The biggest lesson I have learned from emotions is that all of us are dealing with something that we do not always know how to express. Sometimes we don’t realise we use violence to protect others from the horrors of the world. The secret is discovering the awareness of our own actions.
What starts out as contemplation soon becomes a vision into a new reality of energy transference. As spatial derivatives become transformed through material communication between glass, steel, light, and sonic binaural beats and affirmations embodied within the experience of the installation. Binaural beats are two pure tones of different frequencies which may activate different brainwave activity which promote a meditative state. The affirmations “I am love, I am loved, I beam out love, I radiant love” are repeated in a voice recording played through speakers that causes vibrations within the steel and glass structure. The viewer is left with an insight into the world of feeling and “being”.
Bridget Modema works in multiple forms including sculpture, sound, and installation art. Modema is currently finishing her MFA at the University of Pretoria as well as completing her online Metaphysics degree, through University of Metaphysics, Arizona. She apprenticed from 2013 to 2018 with South African artist’s Lothar Böttcher (glass), Johann Nortje (sculptor) and Guy de Toit (bronze casting). She has participated in various exhibitions nationally and internationally.