Vivian Vivas ’23 Unveils Video Exhibition ‘may I die before I’m gone’
Visual Arts alum Vivian Vivas ’23 launched her video exhibition titled may I die before I’m gone. Hosted by Alexander Berggruen in New York (1018 Madison Avenue, Floor 3), the exhibition will ran through August 22, 2024.
may I die before I’m gone is a meditation on our collective unconscious and communal grieving for the natural world. Her exploration of the psychological landscape of the afterlife—a continuous cycle of death and rebirth—manifests in symbolic language that reveals the soul’s struggle between pain and pleasure, survival and celebration.
To create this film, Vivas traveled to San Martín de los Andes, a Patagonian town surrounded by volcanic lakes that birthed some of the continent’s first life. The rich iron soil of this region influences the film’s imagery, where each footstep brings back memory and meaning. This setting becomes a backdrop for the physical and metaphorical burdens carried by the characters, encouraging viewers to reflect on their personal struggles.
“The work subtly delves into non-human perspectives to frame ecological questions,” reads the exhibition pamphlet. “Are we wild or domesticated; is this distinction arbitrary, or connected to subjective expressions of alienation and freedom?”
The film, presented on a wall constructed from LED screens, included select scenes that Vivas described as “emotional doors” to deep feelings that enable a change in perspective. Through this visual language, she portrayed humans at their emotion-driven core, grappling with contradictory forces of connection and separation: between performers, their psyche, other animals, and the earth.
The exhibition's immersive experience was heightened by the film's continuous loop, which lacks a traditional beginning or end, allowing viewers to encounter the video much like they would a living being. Vivas offered fragmented glimpses into a cycle of quiet grief, highlighting the poetic beauty that can emerge from suffering. “Through Vivas’s visceral visual language, luscious red cherries become as graphic as a lamb carcass. The moving images, all in slow motion, ignite tactile sensations as she presents swaying grass, rushing water, and tender caresses between performers.”
In the vein of Collective Rewilding, may I die before I’m gone suggests transcendence through finding community with all “biotic forces” and proposes a “post-human-centric system of care” emerging from the transformative power of crisis. The film reflects the vulnerability and fragility of life, holding a dying man and a deteriorating ecology in its arms, with hopes of rebirth. Speaking about her exploration of grief, Vivas said: “And yet there is beauty found in everything, an aesthetic even to that which causes pain, and it is precisely that beauty that holds a person captive, unable to look away, and provides a path, as experience, for the artist, and hopefully, the audience, to move forward.”
Vivian Vivas received a BFA in Film and Photography from the San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI). She previously studied Photography at the Andy Goldstein School of Creative Photography in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Notably, Vivas was a finalist for the 2022 Frankenthaler Climate Award and received the 2018 Kodak Award from SFAI. The artist held a recent solo show at Dilalica Gallery in Barcelona (part of the Loop Festival video art circuit) and was included in group shows at the Fredric Snitzer Gallery, Miami, FL, and at Root Division, San Francisco, CA. Recent performances include ARTefACTe 2023 in Barcelona and the John Giorno Octopus Series at Performance Space in New York. Her work was showcased in: In Response: Jonas Mekas at the Jewish Museum in New York, Summer Salon at Half Gallery in New York, Between the Self and its True Home at the UCLA New Wight International Biennial in Los Angeles, and High Beams No.6 Convoy at the Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design in Denver. Vivas is a Latin American artist who lives and works in New York, NY. May I Die Before I’m Gone was the artist’s first solo show with Alexander Berggruen.
