“navigating ways,” part of the ongoing “jasmine series,” is a site-specific installation featuring the “to see, without reproach” project.
A compass, a teleidoscope, a magnifying lens, a kaleidoscope, and a surveyor’s chain: respice, adspice, prospice (look behind, look here, look ahead). to see, to site, to be sighted.
Created as a global awareness project, to see, without reproach offers viewers opportunities to interact, on different levels, in a multi-sensory dérive, exploration of perceptual experience.
The focal point of to see, without reproach is a sighting/siting kit containing navigational and optical devices designed to aid in positioning one’s self in both physical and metaphorical space. The sighting/siting kit belongs to Jasmine, a knowing guide and conduit for shifting consciousness and expanding awareness. Jasmine’s kit is a guiding system for derives, wanderings, of interior and exterior landscapes. Each device contained within the kit carries out a singular function for its user: the compass, to identify position, location and destination; the teleidoscope, to focus attention on one’s immediate environs; the magnifying lens, to closely examine; the surveyor’s chain, to measure from point to point; and a kaleidoscope, to unify fragments into a whole.
As a symbol of physical and spiritual repair, a large glass mending needle is included in the kit as well. The needle represents seeing to things, taking care, mending fences, broken relationships, spiritual rifts, global divides.
When something is mended it often becomes stronger than it was before it was in need of repair.
These tools provide receptive users new ways of considering notions of place, perspective and path.
Lisa Kaftori in collaboration with Joan Giroux
Work with Me, The Averill and Bernard Leviton A+D Gallery, Chicago, Illinois, 2011