Investigating the smallest in order to understand the largest: Alexandra Hunts (b. 1990, Lviv, Ukraine) deals with scientific questions that she intuitively approaches out of personal interest. Her exploration of quantum physics, the science that examines the behaviour of minute particles of matter, led to a series of sculptures: photos of the shadows of waves printed on semi-transparent canvas stretched over metal constructions. With this series, Alexandra refers to the ways in which light manifests itself: "Actually it is both a particle and a wave. Only we are not able to perceive it in both states at the same time. So the recipient determines the form: particle or wave.”
In her translation of the complexities of quantum theory into visual form, Alexandra makes a connection with her own background. “When I was growing up, Ukraine had just broken away from the Soviet Union. There was an overriding sense of freedom.” The metal frames are reminiscent of antennas that pick up radio or television waves. For Alexandra, they symbolize freedom of information and movement, just as a wave is free and unlimited – seemingly, however, because: “Waves end too, when they collide with something. In my sculptures, I frame them in, limit their freedom of movement. Just as Ukraine was not as free as it seemed in my youth; the available information was largely determined by politics.”
To what extent does her background determine her place in the world? The title of the series Can You Hear the Shape of the Drum? turns that question around and provides a possible answer. It refers to a mathematical research project in which two different shapes of drums turned out to be capable of producing the same resonance. “Even in a different setting, with different conditions, you can still arrive at the same outcome. A nice metaphor for life.”
The distortion of information also plays a role in another series of sculptures, Blind Will Always Walk in Circles, which refers to Dalton's atomic models. “To map the composition of matter,” says Alexandra, “Dalton developed his own language for his atomic theory.” The sculptures each consist of an open grid of circular shapes and linear offshoots. Parts of them are covered with reflective fabric containing pictures of the leaves of the Japanese ginkgo, the only plant species to survive the atomic bombing by the Allies in World War II. A totally unexpected outcome, just as the development of the atomic bomb was an unforeseen consequence of the accumulation of knowledge about atoms. Similarly, the sculptures are significantly different at any given moment because the light that falls on them and the shadows they cast change throughout the day. Alexandra: "No research is without consequences. Like the shadows of my sculptures, information is always changing.”