alive still, 2020

This is a second in a series of still life centric works created in collaboration by Addie Wagenknecht and Aiala Hernando. Alive Still, is a new series which feeds off their original 2016 series Still Alive which conceptualized the golden age still life genre from a contemporary perspective. In the 2020 series, the duo seeks to refine the notion and value of time as distances collapse- spending often weeks and weeks alone together.

The contemporary works speak to further defining the artifacts of modern coping mechanisms by incorporating them into the forefronts. While the works reference the prior series, they explore the now, the understanding that the past is not a finished story but an ongoing state, a part of continual being. Using Zoom, whatsapp and gchat, Alive Still was conceived with the intimate twist of translating our isolation, prior collaborations together, current stress induced vices while facing the challenge of how we would collaborate while countries apart…