Aida Klein

Region: Pacific Coast

My snow angel body of work began as a fascination with a hyper-nostalgic icon and has evolved into an investigation into the very means by which nostalgia is established. Snow angels are emblematic of a paradox: a "collective" individual experience that simultaneously speaks of personal acts and cultural impressions. The formation in the snow is not only a symbol of its own creation, but due to its prevalence in movies and on the internet, is now a symbol for nostalgia itself. Nostalgia is normally rooted in a longing to return to a different time or place in one's own life. This is now contradicted by the saturation of images in our media culture, enabling viewers to feel a longing to re-experience something they never experienced to begin with. Experience and memory are thereby replaced with iconographic conditioning. My need to paint snow angels is somewhat insatiable, a desire or longing left by my own lack of the experience. Each time I paint them it's as if I personally am feeling the joy of lying in a fresh pile of snow and goofily flailing my arms and legs around.