What would you do if you were trapped inside a dark box for 17 days straight?
The answer for Gosia Wlodarczak would be to draw, as evidenced by her recent display at RMIT Gallery in Melbourne. The Polish artist spent nearly two and a half weeks packaged inside a sensory limitation cube (otherwise known as a giant black box), embarking on a self-imposed challenge to sketch everyday from 10:30 AM to 5 PM with as little exposure to the outside world as possible.
The entire adventure, titled "A Room Without A View", was documented via webcam, allowing audiences to spy on Wlodarczak's daily happenings as she stood, sat and stooped inside her cube. Of course, her activities consisted almost entirely of drawing on the walls of her temporary sanctuary, creating a frenzied, cross-stitched design all around her, meant to represent what she "saw" while in the dark enclosure.
“This project will be an experiment where I deliberately deny myself the complex stimuli of my senses, especially the sense of sight,” Wlodarczak in a statement before the project launched. "I recall the experience of a person in solitary confinement, unable to experience the change, exchange and complexity of the world outside, or an embryo in the womb experiencing the womb as the whole universe.”
Wlodarczak spent only a portion of the 17 days in the dark emptiness of her black cube, so we doubt Marina Abramovic would be impressed with the feat of performance art. However, the images created during her "womb"-like experience, which began on June 19 and ended its run on July 5, are certainly worth a glance. Scroll down for a peek inside Wlodarczak's cube and let us know your thoughts on the project in the comments.
