The Arrivants

Abstract

First, I feel the dark, then the cold. The underground, black-walled space below the main FADA gallery is crypt-like in midwinter. Or perhaps I am underwater. As the three acts or tableaux of Christine Checinska’s The Arrivants unfold around me, I come to feel that I am swimming through semi-conscious and buried memories, from an individual and collective history. These surface through Checinska’s trawling and deployment of cloth, stitch, text and oral testimony.