"Inspired by the work of the 11th-century figure Aldo Manuzio (also known as Aldus Manutius), an Italian printer and creator of the enchiridion, a precursor to the modern paperback book, Nolan investigates the moral qualities of Manuzio's dream to disseminate literature to a wide audience. In her essay 'Imagine feeling optimistic,' Nolan asks if "the power of a dream is in its capacity to inconvenience reality." The exhibition explores the agency of dreams, using the dream as a throughline to question the beliefs around which the world structures itself."
"Through her hand-tufted tapestries, pencil drawings and colorful sculptures, Nolan creates a surreal bedroom scene that pulls at the edges of our assumed shared reality. At the Biennale preview, we spoke about dreams, the invention of secularism and religious imagery. The work gathers references across religion, permeability, literature, and history, and frames them through the dream as a lens for examining how reality is organized."
"I think using research as a verb is probably a little bit more deliberate than the way that I work. In retrospect, the thing that really kicked things off is that I started wondering about the origin of the idea of the secular. Having grown up in a fairly standard Catholic upbringing in Ireland, I always had this notion that the secular is this space for the agnostic, and it's a space for thought outside of the realm of God and things like that. I learned that the secular is an idea from a pope in the 11th century."
"The whole thing is basically a power grab going on between the pope and various sorts of Holy Roman emperors or kings. Something that I've always been really interested in is the way in which Christianity has quietly shaped the society that we live in. In some"
Ireland’s pavilion at the Venice Biennale in the Arsenale presents Dreamshook by Isabel Nolan, curated by Georgina Jackson with The Douglas Hyde. The work draws inspiration from Aldo Manuzio, an 11th-century Italian printer associated with the enchiridion, a precursor to the modern paperback. Nolan examines the moral dimensions of Manuzio’s dream of spreading literature widely. The exhibition uses dreams as a throughline to probe the beliefs that structure the world. Hand-tufted tapestries, pencil drawings, and colorful sculptures form a surreal bedroom scene that tests the boundaries of assumed shared reality. The project also connects dreams with questions about secularism and religious imagery.
Read at Berlin Art Link
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