On Friday my friend dragged me to the opening of a new exhibition by Lis Rhodes in Nottingham Contemporary called Dissident Lines and I'm grateful that she did. 

"Lis Rhodes is a pioneer of experimental filmmaking and a major figure in the history of artists working with film in Britain. Enabled by the Freelands Award 2017, Dissident Lines is Rhodes’ first-ever survey and will span almost 50 years of work. Significantly, this is the first time that Nottingham Contemporary has ever dedicated all of its galleries to a retrospective. The exhibition will span Rhodes’ entire career, from iconic pieces such as Dresden Dynamo and Light Music to a specially commissioned new work. Dissident Lines will be accompanied by a comprehensive monograph." - nottinghamcontemporary.org

The visuals were truly contemporary - very trippy, dark and experimental. By far, my favourite exhibit/room was the film installation Light Music (1975). I could spend hours in there walking around, dancing and looking at my shadow on the screen. It was therapeutic in a way even. But still fun. I felt like in a movie, and old cinema. I love those installations that I can be a part of, the ones that allow me to move and shape myself into a piece of art. It's calming, inspiring, motivating, refreshing, stimulating...

"Formed from two projections facing one another on opposite screens, Light Music is Rhodes’s response to what she perceived as the lack of attention paid to women composers in European music. She composed a ‘score’ comprised of drawings that form abstract patterns of black and white lines onscreen. The drawings are printed onto the optical edge of the filmstrip. As the bands of light and dark pass through the projector, they are ‘read’ as audio, creating an intense soundtrack, forming a direct, indexical relationship between the sonic and the visual. What one hears is the aural equivalent to the flickering patterns on the screens." - tate.org.uk

Another installation that touched me emotionally was the wall with the list of thousands documented deaths of refugees and immigrants due to the restrictive policies of "Fortress Europe". It was interesting but horrifying to read at the same time. Children, women, men and their deaths, it's all written on there: their age, the region of origin, the cause of death. I had to stop myself from imagining all these poor souls going through such a traumatic journey only to be dead moments later. 

This wall was leading to a room where a movie was played explaining the agony, the pain of women and men who suffered domestic violence and forced labour. Even Lithuanians were mentioned, my people.. thousands of them tortured physically and mentally to work without the identity of their own.

All in all, the exhibition was exciting yet terrifying but the Still I Rise exhibition I visited back in October still remains my favourite I've seen so far.