Alexi Keywan’s Burden of Hope

The work of Alexi Keywan can be identified through her etched silhouettes of quotidian urban scenes. This is shown to a powerful effect in her Burden series. In Burden of Hope a billboard rises above the horizon and dominates the urban landscape.

In this work I was interested in the way the addition of sound could create a sense of the street-life moving underneath the billboards. I was interested in expanding Keywan’s frame. In Burden of Hope the addition of field recordings at a train station positions the billboard into a very specific urban location. Keywan’s billboard remains a strong and constant fixture as trains move beyond the perimeter platform.

Keywan’s Burden of Hope is one of 18 prints that I interpreted through sound for the audio-visual exhibition Habitat. It can be viewed until June 24th at West Gallery Thebarton in Adelaide.