This week, Jared brings us a playful public art installation at the North End waterfront, opulent Easter eggs from Russian Tsars, and a film festival hit presented by ArtsEmerson.
“The Shape of Play,” a public art installation presented by the Jewish Arts Collaborative and Now + There through Oct. 31
Waterfront Park (also known as Christopher Columbus Park) in Boston’s North End is the site of a playful, new public art installation. “The Shape of Play” is a new work by artist Sari Carel that poses the provocative question: Do you feel free to play? Carel has crafted large, colorful sculptures rising from sandboxes that are reminiscent of children’s building blocks. The blocks also project a multi-channel soundscape, created using sounds Carel collected from a number of Boston-area playgrounds.
“The message of who feels free to play doesn't change, and in fact I think is more emphasized and more poignant in these times,” says Now + There Executive Director Kate Gilbert. “That is the power of public art. Whether it's in the good times or the bad times, it brings people who wouldn't normally come together, together.”
“Tradition and Opulence,” on view at the Museum of Russian Icons through Oct. 25
No one celebrated Easter quite like the Russian Tsars, who made a tradition of exchanging ornate, decorative eggs during the Christian holiday. At the Museum of Russian Icons, the new exhibition “Tradition & Opulence: Easter in Imperial Russia” features nearly 200 objects highlighting the splendor of the season in Imperial Russia. From inauspicious wood-carvings to the bejeweled, decorative eggs of Fabergé, audiences will find Easter carvings and creations in almost every medium.
“Initially eggs were exchanged, they were painted red,” says the exhibition’s co-curator Nicholas Nicholson. “It's really in the 18th century when Catherine the Great starts ordering elaborate porcelain eggs to be exchanged that the tradition begins when eggs begin to be made of precious materials.”
“Our Time Machine” available on-demand via ArtsEmerson through Sept. 22
The award-winning film festival hit “Our Time Machine” is now streaming on-demand via ArtsEmerson. The documentary focuses on Shanghai artist Maleonn and his father Ma Ke, a famed director of the Beijing and Shanghai operas who is suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. To help process his father’s condition, Maleonn creates “Papa’s Time Machine,” an autobiographical play performed with life-sized puppets which tells the story of a boy passing through time to retrieve his father’s memory.
“Our Time Machine is a film rife with nuance,” says Jared. “It’s the story of fathers and sons, mortality and both the power and fragility of the memory of lives lived.”
Do you feel free to play? Tell Jared about it on Facebook or Twitter!
Correction: A previous version of this story misspelled Nicholas Nicholson's surname.
