www.artslant.com/global/artists/show/50744-teresa-diehl

The Return of Pleasure (2005-2010)

Video Installation

The work of Teresa Diehl is a journey for the senses. Traveling through images, sound and installation, she creates scenarios where the territory becomes an exploration of memory with the inherent possibility of transformation. 

In her installation for The Sixth Borough exhibition, Diehl has created a labyrinth of images, which question, in the artist's words, "How can a space release the stories that permeated it? How to reveal ephemeral memories that come in and out, merging the now with the past? In "The Return of Pleasure" intimate childhood images, which perhaps reflect our own, subtly appear and disappear in projections on a woven screen made of fishing line.  The forms of children playing, playful parents, laughter and swings become one with our own memories as we wander through the double image created by the screens. 

In Diehl’s work, light becomes the narrator of reconstructed memories; slowly emerging from the dark, and suspended in unhurried motion. The complex of images in the videos touch us kindly, almost as a reminiscence, but then suddenly something hidden arises, perhaps from the disoriented mix of narrative, sounds, fades, angle and lights. And that jab to our unconscious leaves so quickly that we are not sure if it was really in our past or just a disturbing fiction that suits a feeling or sense of being that we had a long time ago.

The screen, made from millions of loops and knots, connect invisible lines, like dream catchers, a charm used to protect sleeping children from nightmares; where bad dreams would stay in and disappear with the light of day, while good dreams would pass through.

Courtesy of the Artist.