Forest Spirit Rising
site specific video installation
Allison Kotzig
The Projects
2015

This piece is both a conceptual work as well as a portrait of a spirit I saw lingering by a remote Carpathian forest road earlier this year.
Conceptually, this work is part of the Ouroboros series which uses the pelvic bone to discuss Infinity. Although it is a bone, representing death, it houses the womb and is the architecture of creation, thereby symbolizing eternal fertility and the Life-Death-Re-Birth cycle. The infinity sign can be seen in the shapes on the bone.
Long hair is an almost universal sign of fertility, which is why very long hair on old women evinces anger, confusion and fear among many. The torrential growth and flow of the long hair on this mask of death unsettles the viewer as it discusses the latent power and strength in death.
The Nest, woven from a deeply black recycled material, is also a place of generation, here, one is uncertain of what is being generated.
The firepit brings us back to the Paleolithic, in order to recreate a feeling of eternity.
The video projected over the entirety of the piece is of a forest as seen from a moving car. It is both inclusive and an outsider’s view of mystery.