ENVASE

(2018 Anyines)

With this dual release of music and marble sculpture, ‘Envase’ unfolds the artistic collaboration between Honduran/Danish composer Xenia Xamanek and Danish visual artist Lea Guldditte Hestelund. Anyines hosts this collaboration, facilitating a wide palette of souvenirs, available in the form of keychains, t-shirts, cups, iPhone covers, posters and magnets for your fridge.

For Xamanek and Hestelund, ‘Envase’ is an exploration of a common artistic interest in voice, mouth and body as autonomous entities:

“We see the sculpture as a body wherein the bodiless voices can take temporary habitat. The souvenirs are copies of this body, so you get the image of the original - an image that is replicated and replicable and thus accessible for all. The origin of the sculpture becomes unclear and the souvenirs become simulations of something that may or may not exist. They have a circular lineage, without a starting point, as a never-ending repetition.”

Envase is the Spanish equivalent of the English word container, carrier, or ‘a thing that holds something else’ as described by author Ursula Le Guin when arguing how the container should be the real hero in the story of the evolution. Envase contains recordings of Xamaneks deceased grandfather whose acapella lovesongs appear throughout the album. With this symbolical embrace between loved ones, artists and art forms, the title of the release also points towards more care-full times.

Xamaneks insistent and haunting vocal experiments inhabit the minerals of the marble sculpture, of what resembles something in between a human embryo and a larva. The form is familiar, smooth and it seems to come alive and linger with you along with the chanting voices. With Envase Hestelund has created the material counterpart and carrier of Xamaneks sound - a new mythic being of voice and body, always evolving and never stable.

With this dual release of music by Xamanek and marble sculpture by Hestelund, Anyines hosted the opening of an art show/giftshop, facilitating a wide palette of souvenirs, available in the form of keychains, t-shirts, cups, Iphone covers, posters and magnets for your fridge.

Text by Pernille Zidore

Photography: David Stjernholm

Listen and buy ENVASE here..