Peggy Ahwesh: The Night Sky
Still from Curve the Night Sky. Courtesy of the artist and Microscope Gallery.
Still from Curve the Night Sky. Courtesy of the artist and Microscope Gallery.
Still from Curve the Night Sky. Courtesy of the artist and Microscope Gallery.
Still from The Summer Triangle. Courtesy of the artist and Microscope Gallery.
Still from The Summer Triangle. Courtesy of the artist and Microscope Gallery.
Still from The Summer Triangle. Courtesy of the artist and Microscope Gallery.
Curve the Night Sky (Peggy Ahwesh, US 2021) 4K Digital Video, 5 mins.
The Summer Triangle (Peggy Ahwesh, US 2023) 4K Digital Video, 5 mins.
Active in film since the late 1970s, Peggy Ahwesh (American, b. 1954) has created an expansive body of work covering a diverse and eclectic range of filmmaking styles.
The Night Sky is a pair of experimental videos that evoke the sensation of being outside during the summertime, as the evening twilight fades into the darkness of night. Using time-lapse cinematography combined with long exposures, Ahwesh’s camera points skywards as illuminated terrestrial features emerge, shift, and recede against the vastness of space. The main audio track is performed by Radio Guitar, Ahwesh’s sound collaboration with artist Barbara Ess.
“The pandemic era of 2020/2021, I spent most nights outdoors alone transfixed by the theater of the stars and the dance of the fireflies. My sense of time expanded and slowed but the time-lapse camera condenses and speeds up the experience, in seeming contradiction. I waved my arms to trip the neighbors’ motion-sensitive lights to magical effect on the trees in my backyard.” - Peggy Ahwesh