I got an invitation from Milena Carbone (mylena1992) for the opening of her newest exhibition “The 5th Season” at Artsville. The opening was yesterday. I visited early on Tuesday, December 13th.
Milena herself wrote about “The 5th Season”:
“The fifth season is a three-part installation that questions our tendency to follow a path of self-destruction. It is related to the imminent threat of dramatic consequences for all living species as a result of climate change. It tries to dig deeper into the roots of our denial.
The “fifth season”, is an imaginary season, which will replace the four seasons we have known. One season in a year, chaotic, devastating. A foul beast that humanity will have created. I sincerely hope that this work will allow us to go beyond good conscience, purely intellectual awareness or judgment to lead everyone towards a fertile, new reflection on ourselves, on our relationship to the world; and to our planet, the only paradise that is a closed garden whose walls we have hit.
The 5th Season is the final exhibition of a triology, consisting of “Blind”, “Africa” and “Heroes”. All three parts are shown at Artsville. Milena recommends to see “The 5th Season” in exactly this order.
Impressions of “The 5th Season” by Milena Carbone @ Artsville (1)
It is recommended that you use “Shared Environment” and “Advanced Lighting”. If your macine allows it, use shadows from projectors and sun/moon and allow media streaming.
I saw the first part “Blind” in June 2022 as a part of an exhibition at La Maison d’Aneli (read Art in Second Life 2022 (57) La Maison d’Aneli June/July 2022)
Blind explores our denial of the studied, validated, stated, detailed crisis of climate change for which we are collectively responsible : natural, economic, social and demographic disasters. And yet we do nothing, but continue our frenzy of senseless consumption and expend our energy in war.
Blindness is a recurring theme in myths, particularly Greek myths. Tiresias and Oedipus are well known examples. Blindness is both a punishment and a way to change one’ s view of the world and oneself.
The exhibition consists of five themes displayed in an original installation, thirteen images and seven short stories.
Impressions of “The 5th Season” by Milena Carbone @ Artsville (2) – part I: “Blind”
The exhibition is not set up as the one I saw at La Maison d’Aneli in June. There are 4 rooms titeled “Don’t Look Up”, “Don’t Look Beyand”, “Look Down On” and “Look Away”.
Milena’s art consists of texts, pictures and visual experience. Each room is dedicated to a story that you can download to read and that Milena illustrated with pictures and objects. In total you find seven stories … that feature Tiresias, Daphne, Oedipus and his daughter Antigone, Clarissa Dalloway, and George and Martha. Milena published the stories on her website,
“Africa” is the second part of “The 5th Season” and I saw it end of October 2022 at Nitroglobus Roof Gallery, (read Art in Second Life 2022 (88) Africa by Milena Carbone @ Nitroglobus Roof Gallery).
Milena wrote about “Africa”:
“Africa” takes a look at the African continent, both amazed and crude.
Amazed, because Africa is a fertile paradise of biodiversity and beauty and the cradle of humanity, born in the rift, the vagina of the earth.
Crude, because Africa is a continent raped, slaughtered, poisoned, looted with impunity by empires, in cynical disdain of its inhabitants. Africa is what started it all by the grace of evolution, and will end by the rapacity of man.
“Africa” consists of 13 pictures:
The story of Grace, in seven paintings, an Ethiopian orphan who, at age 33, inherits the home of her father whom she never knew. As she explores this strange house, she more or less follows the biblical journey from creation to paradise and God’s doubt one Sunday night (“Oh my God, I think I’ve screwed up so damn bad”). In this part, Milena Carbone clears God of predestination and gives keys to understand that, if he is at the origin of the Creation, he has created the conditions of free will.
The Twilight of Humans is the story of Abel, an African man whom Grace meets in her house. In six tableaux, he travels through the destruction of the African continent, ends up being the last man in the world and makes his own burial ground in the rainforest.
Again “Africa” is displayed different than at Nitroglobus Roof Gallery. I personally was more impressed of this part of “The 5th Season” the way it was presented at Nitroglobus Roof Gallery. The pictures at Artsville are presented at the walls. In the center are some 3D statues of African animals. Once you get closer, the statues vanish and texts appear instead. As always in Milena’s exhibitions, texts and pictures build one unit. While in “Grace’s wing” the texts deal with God, the texts in “Abel’s wing” deal with the plagues that mankind has caused on earth: climate change, extinction of species and forced migration.
Impressions of “The 5th Season” by Milena Carbone @ Artsville (2) – part II: “Africa”
Milena mentioned in the accompanying notecard that her writing style for the texts featured at the exhibition “Africa” is “more syncopated than usual, cutting the story with several levels of interpretation with inserts of scientific facts, memories or questionings of herself. I readily admit to having been amazed and inspired by the American author Jenny Offill.“
For the pictures Milena continued further expanding and broadening her style. She used the AI Midjourney again to create the backgrounds of her pictures. Milena had an exhibition of pictures created with Artifical Intelligence just recently: “Metamorphoses” (read here). The characters were added from Second Life.
The third part of “The 5th Season” is called “Heroes” and it was new to me.
Heroes tells 12 extraordinary stories of ordinary or mysterious people, all imaginary. The stories take place in the future, in all parts of the world. Milena’s intention is to set the stage for new myths. Myths structure our vision of the world. The myths of today are the same as those of ten thousand years ago: men dominant and superior, carnivorous and subduing the living, violent and cunning, explorers and conquerors in a world without limits.
We are facing the limits of our planet, our myths are no longer operative. We must create new myths, new imaginaries that allow us to find our place in an entirely new, exhausted and limited world. Each story features values compatible with this world, diverse heroes from all walks of life. They are written in a style reminiscent of the news stories found in the back pages of newspapers.
Impressions of “The 5th Season” by Milena Carbone @ Artsville (2) – part III: “Heroes”
When you approach one of the the 12 pictures it folds up into 3 parts – the picture in the center and the story on the left and right. Just one picture folds up into tow pictures and one text in the center. As it takes time to read the stories, there’s a chair in fron ot each of the 12 heroes where you can sit down and read – and get into Milena’s world of pictures and texts.
Heroes is the concluding chapter of the trilogy “The 5th season”. It is the hopeful part of the work.
Milena Carbone (mylena1992) is a French artist and is in Second Life since mid 2019. She discovered its artistic potential and since then has devoted all her free time to creation, associating, as in real life, images and texts: “Milena Carbone is a fiction in which, as in any artistic work, biographical and imaginary elements are mixed.” Her creative process is iterative: some of her images inspire her stories and these stories modify the development of the image, which itself transforms the story.
Milena has an own gallery, the Carbone Studio and she has a bookstore @ Noir’Wen City.
Milena has an own website, you can also find her on flickr here and you can read her texts here.
Artsville was created in collaboration the Art Korner blog, owned and founded by Frank Atisso. Frank is also the curator of exhibitions at Artsville.
Thank you for another great exhibition, Milena. I enjoyed my visit. Thank you Frank Atisso and the whole team at Artsville for enabling “The 5th Season” by Milean Carbone.
Landmark to Artsville and The 5th Season by Milena Carbone
http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Caribbean%20Ocean/62/97/3201
Landmark to The Carbone Studio
http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Woiler/176/163/3287
Landmark to The Carbone Bookstore @ Noir’Wen City
http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Noir%20Wen/243/203/32
Milena’s website
https://sites.google.com/view/thecarbonegallery/news
Milena Carbone’s flickr
https://www.flickr.com/photos/milenacarbone/
Milena Carbone’s writing
https://medium.com/@539568
Diomita Maurer’s Blog 