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A swimmer between worlds

Nina Gonzalez-Park

Nina Gonzalez-Park was raised across the US, Mexico, and Japan, simultaneously with three languages and three cultures. She obtained a BA in Neuroscience at Boston University, worked in global clinical research, and is now an artist-scientist at Central Saint Martins.

Nina’s identity exists between worlds, and this is reflected in her work, constantly diverging and converging, in flux. She examines how we exist in our worlds, the materiality, the physicality, the sensations, the intimacy of making. Swimming between worlds, Nina confronts impossibilities and the unknown.

Nina Gonzalez-Park was raised across the US, Mexico, and Japan, simultaneously with three l...

I fell in love with kitesurfing, finding myself in a bubble of paradise - a life by the ocean, it didn't feel real. What about the bubble in London? In Central Saint Martins?

There was a choice made in that moment. In a parallel universe, I became a kitesurf instructor. In this universe, I went back to London. Maybe I can reconcile these two bubbles: ocean/city, athlete/artist, consumer/producer, useless/functional, process/outcome.

Where does the line blur?

This kite and its wormhole seek to break barriers, connecting 'art' and the ‘real world.’ They challenge the divisions we create, blurring these imaginary lines.

Final work

(kite)

Surfplan is a specialised software to design kites and wing foils. I modified an archived old-system kite design to create my own kite, learning to use this software in the process.

The domination of Apple, Google, and Amazon has created a hunger to keep consuming endlessly and seamlessly. The labor, the production, the logistics can all stay behind smokescreens - you don't know how to make a smartphone, nor do you know where all the parts came from or have been, you just know how to use it.

I challenged an impossible task as a consumer, to consider the birth and life of an object that is in a constant state of uncertainty: can this kite fly? Will it function? Is it art?

Wormhole: the Creative Process

Where do ideas come from? What is happening in your mind when you are creating? The creative process is an enigma, one that neither scientists nor artists have been able to describe well. But, we try.

Time warps when you are creating. Past, present, and future all seem to fold into each other and you get sucked into the moment of making. You enter a space where memories, experiences, and sensations are melting together.

Enter my creative process behind the making and flying of this kite.

Wormhole Plinth

Topology is a regular inspiration in my work. It's part of why I was enamored with kitesurfing in the first place - watching the kite transform into beautiful shapes, I couldn't help but be mesmerised.

"Wormhole: the Creative Process" is a film designed to be watched inside this plinth, a Wormhole made from the plastic leftovers of the kite. Wormholes are part of a theory on how two separate points in spacetime could be connected, like time travel or teleportation. We experience spacetime as a flat plane, but imagine if you could fold that plane and connect it with a tunnel. That tunnel is the wormhole, and this Wormhole gives viewers a glimpse into a different spacetime, one that combines experiences and memories in the process of making.

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A swimmer between worlds

I fell in love with kitesurfing, finding myself in a bubble of paradise - a life by the ocean, it didn't feel real. What about the bubble in London? In Central Saint Martins?There was a choice made in that moment. In a parallel universe, I became a kitesurf i...

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