Review

Object from "Sentimentality," Participatory Installation.

Cory Imig
Sentimentality

6-10 p.m.

Creative Spaces KC
1212 West 8th St., Fourth Floor
Kansas City, MO
816.392.3873

Hours: 6-10 p.m.
Runs through: Tonight only.

Artist's site: http://www.coryimig.com
Gallery site: http://www.creativespaceskc.com

I have no idea what Cory Imig's show tonight will look like when it's finished. Neither does she.  We'll all find out when you've finished helping her put it together.

Sentimentality, Imig's one-night-only event at Creative Spaces KC, will be visual and emotional, perceptual and participatory. There will be exchanges both tangible and immeasurable.

Imig, who recently returned from Georgia to Prairie Village, is doing things backward. Instead of  shedding possessions before the move, she has held onto them -- only to get rid of them tonight.

For tonight's show, Imig designed shelving units to fit the gallery space and filled them with the treasures of her childhood. Over the course of four hours, she'll say goodbye to them, one by one.

Talk about emotional investment in art.

She isn't giving the items away, though. If you want one of Imig's mementos, you'll have to pony up your own memories. That's a bargain, compared to what Imig's giving up. She asks only for your childhood -- in the form of a drawing or a written story or recollection.

(It's like writing a check and not having your bank balance go down ... only legal.)

Each object has a picture taken of it and a description of why it has sentimental value to me, Imig says. There will be tables with paper and drawing utensils available for people to create their trade, when they are ready to trade they will be able to take my object off the shelf and replace it with whatever they created. Once the night is over I will be assembling everything into a book. It will have a picture of the original object, the description, and what it was traded for. (The items were photographed by Arielle Zarr.)

This sort of participatory art is a first for Imig, who holds a Fibers degree from the Savannah College of Art and Design. Judging by her artist's statement, it's a departure both technical and philosophical.

Mapping, path tracking and movement are at the root of my ideas, Imig writes. These are the concepts my work draws from and in turn focuses on. I attempt to document everything to discover the different relationships between things.

The movement aspect is inherent in the show, as is the theme of physical relocation from one point on the map to another. Once Imig trades away these possessions, though, she won't be able to track them. She won't know whether they'll be beloved or forgotten, plunked down on a garage sale table or handed down to children yet unborn.

I like to think, though, that people will treasure Imig's treasures, that this show will be a mutual embrace between the artist and her new home, and that everyone who takes home a piece of her past will remember her.

I also like to think that the items will serve as reminders of a basic truth: That each human interaction is, for better or worse, a permanent entry in the history of everyone involved.

Tonight, then, presents more than an opportunity to shape and be shaped by Imig's art. This is a chance to write -- or draw -- lines of welcome in her life story.

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