Travelers in the Middle of Time
Kim Lindaberry
December 7 - February 23, 2019
Main Gallery
Kim Lindaberry’s art asks the eternal questions: Who are we? Where do we come from? What will we become?
He reifies these existential issues with his Travelers, humanoid beings that exist in “the Middle of Time”-- which could be the future, the past, or the present -- as they journey through the galaxies.
The Travelers have resolved the gender issues our culture struggles with today. Some can be defined as male, some as female, others as hermaphrodites. They are of many colors. The ones with glittery palettes recall underwater sea phenomena – reminding us that in the womb we all start out with gills, and that many water creatures are uni or bi-sexual.
If the Travelers highlight possibilities for our future, they also have important antecedents in various global cultures. Mixed gender sculptures have been created for centuries in West Africa. The Anyang people of Cameroon continue to carve skeletal figures with both male and female sex characteristics, while the Yoruba of Nigeria honor Olodumare, the supreme, all-encompassing god of goodness, who is beyond gender.
Lindaberry often places his Travelers in “nichos,” or niches, which are inscribed with glyphs of disguised prime numbers. Prime numbers represent individuality, as well as offering a universal form of communication. Also hidden among the artworks can be found the universal number “pi,” a formula that other beings in the universe would undoubtedly know. The Travelers are also proportioned according to the Golden Ratio, that mysterious numerical standard found throughout nature, so loved by the ancients, that is one of the basic units of the universe.
Buddha as a young mendicant is always depicted as a near skeletal figure, and the Travelers also suggest Boddhisattvas, or spiritual guides. “Ultimately, as Buddha taught, we are all deities,” Lindaberry says. “We just need to recognize that and wake up. I like the idea that the Travelers have delayed their own ascendance in order to help us out.”
Elisabeth Kirsch
