For Frieze London 2022, Marfa’ is proud to present Rania Stephan’s project, In My Mind’s Eye.
Artist statement:
In My Mind’s Eye proposes to recreate, in an enclosed space, mental images from my past that still haunt me, and others from possible futures.
The idea of space travel has been a lasting obsession ever since I watched Neil Armstrong’s first steps on the moon. Living in Beirut, they were the first images I saw on a television set, as well as being in a live transmission. Space travel and moving images became forever linked in my mind. I solemnly declared to everyone around me that I wanted to become an astronaut. But in Beirut at the time, the sheer expression of this desire got me sent straight to a psychologist. Fortunately, the psychologist reassured those around me about my mental health, and I could keep dreaming. I later became an artist and filmmaker.
Space travel continued to obsess me. I was especially drawn to speculative science fiction, which plays with possible futures while examining the present, albeit more freely and extravagantly.
In the past, I would navigate between the international politics of the space race and the fictions that were produced around it. Today, space conquest has resumed with the new impulse of private investments, which could determine how our future unfolds. As our present world lurches through dystopic twists
and turns, science fiction remains an inspiring lens through which to comprehend our present.
In My Mind’s Eye, is a space that plays with still and moving images I have accumulated over the years, exploring thought patterns and collages that reverberate in different formats and textures. Whether mixing fiction and reality in Lift Off, representing a familiar world on the verge of explosion in Everything is a Rocket, or exploring identification patterns in My Astronaut, these heterogeneous elements combine ways to rethink our everyday struggles both through resistance to dominant forms and through taking pleasure in discovering new possibilities, while pointing to our vulnerable and fragile presence in a world in turmoil.
