CAIRO: What is a Kaleidoscope? According to the Merriam Webster dictionary, it is an instrument containing loose bits of colored material, perhaps glass or plastic, between two flat plates and two plane mirrors. So placed that changes of orientation of the bits inside are reflected in an endless variety of patterns.
Now imagine that this 10 centimeter-long instrument is enlarged to an extent that it allows you to walk into it. At the Townhouse Gallery, unconventional artist Lara Baladi has created an exhibit that allows you to put away your imagination and experience that sensation first-hand.
In fact, Baladi’s work had already been described as a Kaleidoscopic long before this project was undertaken; although this idea has been on her mind for almost three years now.
The idea behind this extraordinary art instillation came to Baladi as she was playing with a toy kaleidoscope, which she finds “completely fascinating. She found that when she passes it on to people, it only occupies their attention for a few seconds, as it is only glitter and little shapes of stars and moons. So when she created her own version, she made the details a little more interesting.
At the opening of Baladi’s exhibition, in contrast to a toy kaleidoscope, no one was able to tear themselves away from the brilliant, captivating instillation. The colors, details and the overall idea simply left people mesmerized.
In her very own Kaleidoscope, Baladi replaces the colored material with 2188 images. About 96 percent of the images are her own still photography and the rest are pictures she has taken of photographs and posters, postcards, stickers and designed papers she had brought from Japan to make paper dolls and some, very few, from the internet.
The specially designed computer program enables these images to shuffle at random (think your Microsoft media player). In each color scheme, there are horizontal (landscape) and vertical (portraits) pictures. The program chooses one vertical picture and two horizontal in the same color scheme 15 times, then moves on to the next color.
This enables Baladi’s Kaleidoscope, like the original one, to have almost infinite possibilities. Baladi compares the concept to human composition. “That, for me, represents us, in terms of DNA. We have a certain number of elements yet the combination makes us different, she said.
So, by using glass and mirrors and constructing them in the shape of a pyramid, Baladi was able to project these images into the prism, with the outcome being the same effect of a Kaleidoscope.
By walking into the Kaleidoscope, you can see your own reflection multiplied inside the instillations, enabling yourself to become a variable in the art piece.
Baladi chose to call it, “Roba Vecehia (or the “Wheel of Fortune ). The idea behind it is that we can see things that have no meaning anymore in a new light. She explains that in a kaleidoscope you are looking at pieces of plastic, glass and thread, but see it as beautiful forms; thus the name kaleidoscope, in Greek kalos means beautiful and eidos means form.
Baladi believes that history is created with pieces that are left behind. In a sense, this project is a documentation of all her previous experiences.
Visit the exhibit at the factory space of the Townhouse Gallery, 10 Nabrawy St., Downtown.
