In his site-specific project COLD FEVER, Escalona weaves a network of metaphors, and succeeds in creating images which are almost impossible to describe in language and words. New approaches to the discourse around illness, weakness and vulnerability are presented as an alternative to the norm of our world and its tendency towards self-optimization.
Escalona’s installative cosmos can and should be entered by the viewer, as it is not only the objects that are linked to each other; as viewers, we are also incorporated into the project. COLD FEVER opposes a linear interpretation and maintains a woven net-like structure, within which individual points come into contact. Thematically, the project is closely linked to Escalona’s own story and experience. He spent many years as a patient in hospitals and knows about the conditions of operating in this hectic, “normal” world as a disabled person. But he also knows the other side, having studied medicine and investigated the “damaged body” in art for his doctorate, on which the works in Künstlerhaus Bethanien build. Taking up Virginia Woolf’s idea, Escalona also sees an opportunity to look at the world through different eyes from the damaged body.