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ILE OMI:House of Water
opens in Cincinnati, this May!

We're extremely grateful that the team from MZ.ICAR has chosen us, and the city of Cincinnati, to debut this immersive video installation artwork — ILE OMI: House of Water.

Fill out the form below to stay tuned in to the exhibition and events!
...then read on for more information!

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More about Mz. Icar

Mz. Icar and PAR-Projects first connected as panelists at The Cincy Nice Social House during Cincinnati’s BLINK event in 2022. An instant connection formed, as both teams are Black-led and value honest approaches to art making and high levels of craftsmanship.

At PAR-Projects, we’ve followed and admired Mz. Icar’s journey and know that we are extremely lucky to be able to debut this next body of work here in Cincinnati. Ile Omi: House of Water is the first “room” of a larger series entitled Diaphanous. Mz. Icar, an anonymous art collective predominantly comprised of Black Women, stands at the intersection of artistic innovation and societal transformation.

Their collective name, “racI.zM,” spelled backward, serves as a guiding principle, symbolizing their mission to upend conventional constructs of gender and race.

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The process:

Below are a few images of actual content and Mz. Icar's installation research.

 

Mz. Icar Immersion
Installation setup
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MzIcar_IleOmi_still002
Installation style
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About the exhibition
ILE OMI: House of Water

In Ile Omi: House of Water, the exploration of Afro-Futurism meets technology is combined with visual story telling and remarkable imagination.

Ile Omi: House of Water is a large scale, multi-channel immersive video installation. It is inspired by intersectional African Diasporic culture, West African culture and chronophysics, the field of physics that specifically deals with the concept of time and time travel. It showcases a thriving underwater community throughout various times. The imagined people are the descendants of the African souls lost during transatlantic slave voyages. The installation transports visitors to a futuristic world where these descendants have adapted to an underwater lifestyle and formed a thriving, communal society.

The video installation creates an immersive underwater environment filled with vibrant colors, textures, and sounds. The work contains a blend of iconography and images inspired by various traditional West African religions and Yoruba customs and imaginings of what a future derived from this experience would look, sound and feel like. Visitors are invited to explore this underwater world and to witness the communities rich cultural traditions, innovative technologies, and harmonious relationships with the surrounding marine ecosystem.

The project uses a combination of archival photography, AI-generated photographs, combined with a custom score to create an alternate reality where visitors can explore alternative histories and futures that were previously deemed impossible. By presenting this alternate reality, the installation invites visitors to re-imagine the potential of humanity and to question the limitations imposed by history and circumstance.

 

More on the project's overall concept can be found HERE.

 

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