All posts by yiping70

Current Exhibition

Finding Home: Mami Takahashi’s Cage Mentality

We Live in the Sky: Home, Displacement, Identity from October 16 to December 7, 2024 at The Stamp Gallery | University of Maryland, College Park | Written by Ellen Zhang

We Live in The Sky is an exhibition that combines diverse voices on what home means to individuals. From Tori Ellison’s use of UMD writing students’ phrases about home to Mami Takahashi’s experience as a woman away from her Tokyo home, both artists explore belonging and identity. How Takahashi’s piece “Cage Mentality” expresses belonging, or the lack thereof, particularly struck me. 

Cage Mentality (2015) is a documentation of Takahashi’s one-hour-long performance, consisting of her building an enclosure of woven strings around herself. Starting with horizontal lines, Takahashi builds a layer of strings inches away from herself. With limited body movement, the artist closes the gaps of the horizontal strings by weaving, knotting, and crossing vertical lines. She does this until her entire body is hidden within the strings. When reflecting on the process, Takahashi states,  “In this uncomfortable situation where my body constantly touched lines, I had to force my arms to stretch more than necessary to continue to create a cage-like space”.

Mami Takahashi, Cage Mentality, 2015, documentation of performance, single-channel video, 03:00 min. 

In this way, the discomfort is self-inflicting, which makes the viewer question why Takahashi is doing this. Despite the uncomfortable process, she finds “the lure of isolation and its pain”. This represents how finding a “home” in a foreign environment is complex as navigating personal identity while facing social pressures can lead to isolation. While seclusion is painful, it can be enticing because it offers refuge from external forces such as adapting to a new language, traditions, and more. However, rejecting pressures to conform isn’t exactly liberating. The fear of losing one’s identity contrasts with the desire to fit in, resulting in internal turmoil. Social connection is a basic human need and, unfortunately, many immigrants feel pressured to sacrifice elements of their identity to satisfy it. In Cage Mentality, the social connection disappears as the barrier between the individual and the outside world becomes starker. 

So what does Cage Mentality say about home? We typically associate the term “home” with comfort. However, Takahashi challenges this idea by reflecting on the complexities of finding this source of solace. The quest for home includes mental turmoil and can lead to painful isolation. At the same time, solitude can provide a sense of security, allowing individuals to remove themselves from the pressures of a foreign environment. 

Takahashi’s work is included in We Live in The Sky at The Stamp Gallery of the University of Maryland, College Park, from October 16 to December 7, 2024.

For more information on Mami Takahashi, visit ​​https://mamitakahashi.art/.

For more information on We Live in The Sky and related events, visit stamp.umd.edu/centers/stamp_gallery.

Current Exhibition

Caught in the Glitch

The Digital Landscape from August 26 to October 5, 2024 at The Stamp Gallery | University of Maryland, College Park | Written by Ellen Zhang

Digitalization has drastically changed the relationship between space, time, and self. With the help of phone cameras, humans can now exist in pixels instead of atoms. Through the cloud, memories can be stored in gigabytes instead of physical albums. Technology has fundamentally changed day-to-day life, allowing humans to transcend the traditional limitations of space and time. 

Ally Christmas, Untitled (Glitchcock Eyes), 2018, Cinemagraph, 00:00:30 (loop).

Consider the question posed by Ally Christmas in her 2018 piece Untitled (Glitchcock Eyes): Is the phone capturing a present being or is it a digital echo of someone’s past? The answer may be both. Christmas describes her work as a “version of herself being caught between the temporal planes of lived present and virtual past”. The lines between these planes are blurred as it is unclear which is being represented where. Upon closer observation of Untitled (Glitchcock Eyes), Christmas’ eyes and nose appear on the phone screen. Is this her “virtual past” that she mentions? In the background, glimpses of her hair and hands cascade across the screen. Are these evidences of the “lived present” she describes? Most importantly, these two planes combine to form, what Christmas states, is “a new kind of zombie”. The eyes and nose of a digital past meshed with the hair and hands of a present self. 

The concept of a zombie exhibits how digitalization shapes an individual’s present self. The way humans interact and portray themselves in the digital world can drastically shift beliefs, values, and attitudes. For instance, social media enables individuals to curate their online identities through carefully selected images. Over time, one’s identity can evolve and become more aligned with their online persona. As a result, it is nearly impossible to differentiate one’s “true self” versus what has been influenced by the digital world. In addition to the fine line between actual and digital, Christmas explores the interplay of past and present in her work. When past moments can be revisited in the form of a picture or data, it opens up the possibility of reinterpreting past experiences. This never-ending process emphasizes how digitalization is an invisible hand in shaping present identity. 

But what are the implications of such processes? When virtual personas and lived experiences come together, it raises the question of what is authentic and what isn’t. This leaves many, including myself, torn between who we are online versus in the physical world. In pursuit of having a likable virtual persona, there is persistent anxiety to become the most appealing version of oneself. As a result, the “zombie” that Christmas refers to can also represent the existential struggles of being in a hyper-digital age. 

Christmas’ use of planes, in terms of past versus present and digital versus reality, facilitates conversation on how the digital world shapes people. By acknowledging how the present self is a product of becoming digital personas and reevaluating the digital past, we can strive to be more intentional about our lived experiences.

Ally Christmas’ work is included in The Digital Landscape at The Stamp Gallery of the University of Maryland, College Park, from August 26 to October 5, 2024. For more information on Ally Christmas, visit ​​allychristmas.com. For more information on The Digital Landscape and related events, visit stamp.umd.edu/gallery.