Jen de Leon

Artist · Designer · Educator

Project Overview

This project is a time-based video artwork exploring how an experience moves through a person beginning in a state of openness, gathering weight and pressure, and eventually turning inward. The work traces an emotional arc rather than a literal narrative, using shifting visual states to evoke softness, strain, reflection, and the quiet slip of time.

Projected across the stone walls of the Grotte du Lazaret in Nice, France, the piece was presented in collaboration with LabSynthE, whose support enabled the work to inhabit the space as an immersive, site-responsive installation.

Conceptual Framework

The artwork examines how certain internal experiences linger long after their initial moment. Instead of depicting a specific place or event, the visuals move through changing emotional temperatures such as lightness, heaviness, pressure, heat, and introspection. The final gesture, a slow fall of sand, reflects the erosion of time and the residue that remains.

It invites viewers to engage with the emotional arc and the sensory experience rather than interpret abstract forms.

Installation Context

The installation is inspired by and references Jim Thompson’s poem, which adds a literary dimension to the work. This connection deepens the exploration of time, memory, and place within the piece.

The cave walls’ textured surfaces and natural acoustics shaped the installation’s atmosphere, allowing the visuals to expand, distort, and settle into the architecture. The collaboration with LabSynthE supported the technical and spatial integration of the work.

Artist Statement

This piece explores how an experience settles into someone over time. It begins in a soft, open state, then gathers weight and pressure before folding inward. I’m interested in how meaning changes as we move through it how something lingers, how it refuses to disappear, and how time continues to slip quietly past. The work sits in the tension between movement and persistence, between what falls away and what remains.

Credits

  • Artist: Jen de Leon
  • Installation Support: Emmanuel Desclaux and Frank Dufour
  • Projection Site: Grotte du Lazaret, Nice, France