Cécile B. Evans' video work How Happy a Thing can be was originally shown in a sculptural installation alongside three 3-D printed mundane personal items - a comb, a screwdriver, and a pair of scissors - modes of technology with relative immunity to updates and upgrades. In the video How Happy a Thing can be, the devices perform a choreographed arch that implies they are being pushed to their limits. Inspired by tabloid breakdowns and mediatized disasters, the objects' paths explore transient ideas of the spirit and the physicality of emotion, in both the human condition and our apparatuses, endowed through the overwhelming desire for something more. Here, the digital is physical, and immaterial states take on a certain weight and proportion. London-based Belgian-American artist Cécile B. Evans (born 1983) explores the the values of emotion and subjectivity in contemporary society. Selected exhibitions are Castello di Rivoli Turin (2017), Museum Leuven (2017), Tate Liverpool (2016), 9th Berlin Biennale (2016).
