Jake Couri
Find Your Ritual, 2019
Single-channel video, 3:00
On loan from the Artist
On view in the E. Craig Wall, Jr. Academic Center from January 10th – February 20th, 2021.
Please note: All buildings on campus, including the Wall Center, are only open to Davidson students, faculty, and staff due to the pandemic.
Artist Statement: My work is concerned with our gradual shift towards a digital existence, presenting an alternate reality to draw the viewer into. Confronting the way our bodies are manipulated and transformed within digital space, while playing on notions of individualism and spirituality through new media. Melding together narratives told through cinema, childhood memories and popular culture regarding both utopian and dystopian environments.
Q&A with the Artist and Gallery Intern Cole Thornton ’21:
When I first watched Find your Ritual, I was intrigued by the juxtaposition of the normal with the abnormal. The yoga home video set up and the female instructor voiceover feel familiar to a generation of viewers raised on YouTube and to all of us now living our lives virtually during a year-long pandemic. The oddity of the piece immediately strikes, especially in comparison to the elements that appear “normal.” The ocean setting and the somewhat uncanny, contorting figure performing the “ritual” in front of a backdrop call into question what we perceive as normal and abnormal, and how our bodies and minds are molded by the digital media we engage. In the interview, I question the artist about this juxtaposition of familiar and grotesque, and he gives an answer that points to the pieces’ fascinating confrontation of our attempts as humans to achieve control and a centering for ourselves and our ultimate failure to do so.
Cole: What does this work have to say about gender and gendered experiences of ritual, with the ambiguously-gendered figure performing the routine?
Jake: The figure’s ambiguity is intentional as it is a digitally rendered being. I wanted to play with the assumption of gender based on the depiction of humanoids in cinema and popular culture.
Cole: What were your inspirations and considerations regarding the interplay of the comforting familiar and the grotesque in this piece, with the familiar, home-yoga video format being performed in an unusual environment by a humanoid yet unnaturally contorting figure?
Jake: The contortion was a jumping off point. This figure performs the actions of a human seeking to center themself, yet cannot grasp it. The familiar narrator’s voice and yoga routine format is disrupted by the figure receiving the information.
Jake Couri’s practice deals with our collective migration into digital space, confronting notions of existentialism, spiritualism and an autonomous future. Graduatied in 2018 from California College of the Arts with a Master of Fine Arts degree, Jake recently completed an Artist-In-Residence at Anderson Ranch in Snowmass Village, Colorado.