Diomita Maurer’s Blog

On October 8th Ilyra Chardin’s installation “The Ghosts in My Closets – Cobwebs & Other Thoughts in the Attic” was opened at “The Hannington Arts Foundation at Xeltentat Enterprises” (HAF).

“Ilyra chardin is an artist and designer, whose work has been featured in numerous installations and exhibits across the grid. Her art work crosses media and styles, spanning from real life and digital to SL art. First and foremost, Ilyra is a story teller. Whether in full SIM, 3D installation, sculpture, or 2D (original mixed media, hand-painted, hand-drawn, and photo) art, she includes multiple layers with depth of meaning. Her work has been the subject of numerous blogs, machinimas, and has been featured on Designing Worlds.” (taken from the accompaying notecard)

I saw Ilyra’s work at La Maison d’Aneli in May/June 2020 where she had an installtion called “The New Normal – The Date”. It showed a little Mediterrean town under the current restrictions (read here)

First Impressions of “The Ghosts in My Closets – Cobwebs & Other Thoughts in the Attic” by Ilyra Chardin

There’s a big board at the entrance of Hive 3 at HAF where Ilyra gives some background about the installion:
“Enter the Hall of Giants, also known as Giant’s square. Behind each door, explore the shadows of my imagination expressed in artistic vignettes.
The area behind each door is a self contained, mini art installation. In order to maintain the illusion presented in each of the display, the doors do no open, but rather they are phanton and beckon you walk through and immerse yourself in the story.”

I entered the Giant’s square, a market hall in a medieval style. I really was a dwarf there, but luckily none of the giants was there who could have overseen me and stepped on me. The saw the above mentioned doors on the ground level as well as on the attic And started exploring the seperate installations.

To the left and to the right on the ground are two rooms. One is occupied by a medival giant magician or alchemist, the other by a giant tailor. If these two are ghosts in Ilyra’s closet, what does that tell us? Does she have a particular connection to these professions? Are her parents an alchemist and a tailor? Or did she have bad experiences as a child with them? I guess you can spin a lot of stories about it.

Impressions of “The Ghosts in My Closets – Cobwebs & Other Thoughts in the Attic” by Ilyra Chardin (1)

In the back of the giant’s court are four more rooms. One shows a rubbish dump surrounded by chimneys and plants of heavy industry, another looks like an old mine or underground industry. Both do not look really healthy. In the third room is a grave, more a mausoleum surronded by a peaceful landscape. There’s a passage to the fourth room where you see the entrance to a mine and a ferryman who brings his passengers to the other whore where the graveyard is located.
Again I can only speculate but for me it looks as if the unhealthy environment kills people and workers. Are these the ghosts in Ilyra’s closet? Who knows?

Impressions of “The Ghosts in My Closets – Cobwebs & Other Thoughts in the Attic” by Ilyra Chardin (2)

On the attic are a few more rooms and more to speculate about. THe first room I visited was quite colourful. You immerse into the digital world, between motherboards and chips, between bits and bytes and printed circuits. This isntallation as actually two rooms, one for the hackers and another for the gamers. At least from a pure artistic view, this installation a highlight.

Impressions of “The Ghosts in My Closets – Cobwebs & Other Thoughts in the Attic” by Ilyra Chardin (3)

But all rooms are connected in some way. We just don’t know how. The are pieces of memories, pieces of thoughts, pictures and scences that appear in dreams and nightmares. The last room I visited looked to me like the headquarter of a secret agency on the first glance. Furnished with just the basics for a headquarter: beds, desks, chairs, computers, one toilet and gasmasks. If you cross the room you can walk through another door and come to a desert, very hot with charred trees and one road leading to nowhere and an old van. The scene is quite scary (at least for me)

Impressions of “The Ghosts in My Closets – Cobwebs & Other Thoughts in the Attic” by Ilyra Chardin (4)

Ilyra is a story teller as stated in the accompanying notecard. I outlined my thoughts, the relation to youth and former days, heavy industry and an unhealthy environment on the ground level. The attic is more related to future, to a world dominated by gamers and hackers in a more and more virtual environment while the real environment is almost uninhabitable and humans live in bunkers … or is the headquarter of a secret agency what was my first thought?

Anyway, you have to make up your own story visiting Ilyra Chardin’s installation “The Ghosts in My Closets – Cobwebs & Other Thoughts in the Attic” at Hannington Arts Foundation. It shall be open until the end of this year.

Hannington Arts Foundation (HAF), the former HEA Gallery is owned by Hannington Xeltentat and was built by Tansee, who also curates the foundation. Thank you Hannington for providing the space and thank you Tansee for enabling Ilyra Chardin’s installation. I enjoyed my visit again.

Landmark to HAF “The Hannington Arts Foundation at Xeltentat Enterprises”
http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Xeltentat%20Enterprises/132/124/3525