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Wearing Interiors and Exteriors: Tori Ellison’s Shell

​​The dress is a staple of clothing history. Its form is associated with femininity, adornment, beauty, and formality.  Tori Ellison has historically worked with the dress motif since the 1990s, using them thematically for self-perception and bodily identities. As seen with her other featured dress piece, Burnt Dress (1993) embodies the ideas of restoration and rebirth through charred remains. The contrasting outlines serve as a reminder of the past and room for new beginnings. 

Tori Ellison, Burnt Dress, 1993, Drawing, Charcoal, Acrylic Polymer, Ash, and Fabric on Paper, 50 x 38 in.

Ellison continues to explore this shape with Shell (2010), a wall-mounted paper dress sculpture. Shell immediately captures attention the way it “floats” on display, as if it’s worn by an invisible being. There is an indisputable mystery and allure surrounding the piece’s voice. We Live in the Sky features Ellison’s interpretation of metamorphosis through Shell’s commentary on personal growth and discovery. 

Tori Ellison, Shell, 2010, Paper, Wire, and Acrylic, app. 5.5 x 45 x 2 in.

We Live in the Sky includes works with the spoken and written word. With accompanying textual pieces like Ellison’s  Sky Writing (2024) and Windows in the Sky (2024), Shell stands out as a piece without words. However, Ellison still gives the dress a voice of its own. Immediately, viewers will notice the spaces carved out within the layered paper. The positive and negative spaces that the paper dress occupies call for a larger inquiry about the intention of this piece. Though its exterior beauty is its main element, it is also important to note the interiors. The organic shapes, layering, and curves of the dress create an invitation instead of a rejection. Ellison’s piece finds itself in a space of temporariness. Shifting localities and movement as the paper medium adapts to the surrounding air. Despite the stillness of the room, Shell stands unafraid. It commands a certain vibe that almost asks for one to keep looking. Like the shells you may find on the beach, Shell’s pearlized surface is a delicate exterior holding untold stories inside.

Shell gives its paper fabric a new form outside of its traditional 2D planes. Perhaps it serves as a literal shell for interpretation. Can we see ourselves inside the dress? Even the name Shell, implies an emptiness to be filled. In a space about displacement and identity, what can our exterior and interior selves find within Shell? Can we find a home in spaces unconventional to us? Beyond gendered clothing, Shell offers a found shield against the changing world. It provides the mind a space to grow into, a hidden place to house one’s vulnerabilities, secrets, and memories. 

Since the beginning of human history, paper has been used to account. It is not far off to assume that paper and humanity are deeply intertwined. In line with conversations surrounding transformation, it leads to a major question: how does paper align with the self? The properties of paper can be closely associated with conceptualizing consciousness since paper can be created, changed, and destroyed. Even the way paper is made, it is taken from trees, turned into ​​wood pulp, and then pressed and dried. As paper, its form is impermanent and yet fixed, having the infinite capacity to become something new. Shell embodies this, as the living and ever-cyclical nature of paper actualizes the nature of identity. The self is never stagnant, it is to be molded, written on, and hung out to dry. 

Tori Ellison, Shell, 2010, Paper, Wire, and Acrylic, app. 5.5 x 45 x 2 in.

A dress is expected to form one’s body. We expect it to highlight the best and hide the worst. However, Ellison calls to honoring the uncomfortable places not explored. In connecting body, mind, and identity, she asks us to reevaluate the ways we view ourselves in the idealist of shapes. Perhaps we can all learn to wear Ellison’s Shell, to make it a home, to remodel it, and eventually outgrow it.

Tori Ellison’s work is included in We Live in the Sky: Home, Displacement, Identity at The Stamp Gallery of the University of Maryland, College Park, from October 16 to December 7, 2024. For more information on Tori Ellison, visit https://www.toriellison.com/. For more information on We Live in the Sky: Home, Displacement, Identity and related events, visit https://stamp.umd.edu/centers/stamp_gallery.

Current Exhibition

Window to Earth

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 Oliver Foley

We Live in the Sky is an exhibition dominated by the tones of paper and black ink, with the vast majority of the works on paper using an achromatic palette. Amongst these works, Tori Ellison’s Windows in the Sky (2024) stands out as one of the exhibition’s only multicolor screenprints. Screen prints only have two discrete values of color: there are areas where the screen allows ink through and areas where the photoresist is hardened and the ink cannot pass through. In order to create the illusion of grays and color gradients, this piece employs a technique called halftone. Halftone prints transform an image into a grid of colored dots, and these dots are scaled in size based on how much of a color should be perceived. In Windows in the Sky, the paper is black, so the space left between the halftone dots of the color results in a darkening of the perceived color. The areas of intersection where the different colored screens meet appears lighter and more saturated, since more of the black background is obscured by the ink.

Tori Ellison, Windows in the Sky (2024)

This dark, yet colorful piece is hung opposite from Tori Ellison’s Sky Writing (2024). The airy, freely floating Sky Writing hangs in stark contrast to the earthy tones of Windows in the Sky. The parchment is semi-translucent like a cloud covering the sun, sparsely adorned with the shadow-like tendrils of calligraphy. One of the central sheets of Sky Writing even uses the same screen as Windows in the Sky, but in a neutral black rather than a hued ink. The bird of the earth and bird of the sky face each other in the gallery space.  The two pieces mirror each other in many ways, including literally: Windows in the Sky is enclosed in a highly reflective glass frame, which almost always reflects the lights of the space and Sky Writing. At times the dark print is overpowered by the reflections, like the reflections of sky on a lake. Standing in this space between Sky Writing and Windows in the Sky conjures up the feeling of floating amidst dense clouds and looking down onto earth through a small window. 

Tori Ellison, Sky Writing (2024)

Tori Ellison’s work is included in We Live in the Sky at The Stamp Gallery of the University of Maryland, College Park, from October 16th to December 7th, 2024. For more information on Ellison, visit https://www.toriellison.com/. For more information on We Live in the Sky and related events, visit https://stamp.umd.edu/articles/stamp_gallery_presents_we_live_sky_home_displacement_identity or visit our instagram @stampgalleryumd.

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

Standing and Showering in Sound: What Center and Periphery Mean in Mami Takahashi’s Audio Journal

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 Trinitee Tatum

Some cannot see the forest for the trees—drawn too close to the core, captivated by its light and promises, unable to look back. Others, existing farther away, wholly see it but are paralyzed by its force. The dominant Western, Anglo-Saxon American narrative weaves itself so insidiously into the cultural zeitgeist and media that it’s hard to identify and articulate, like a word lingering on the tip of the tongue or a dog chasing its tail. My initial introduction to this piece was an anecdote about feeling invisible and othered when prompted to retell my family’s “immigration” story in the third grade. The words evaded me as I attempted to articulate how exclusionary the assignment felt as I was asked to frame my ancestors’ enslavement in relation to immigration via Ellis Island. How, when it came to immigrating to the United States, Ellis Island was at the center, and everything else existed in the margins. Combating the tides of this pervasive dominant narrative is a daunting task, but artists like Mami Takahashi wield the power of language to center and platform the voices of immigrants. In her work Audio Journal (2024), Takahashi memorializes the unique and individualized experiences of immigration, the sensations of belonging and disbelonging, in a sonic assemblage.

Our struggles as immigrants, though individual and varying, share a winding path of fear. Some similar fears are shared regardless of the story: social fear related to the fragility of status, fear of differences in culture and accents, fear of missing out on “common knowledge,” and fear of a limited support system in the new country.

Mami Takahashi via website.
Mami Takahashi, Audio Journal, 2024.

Best described as a sound collage, Audio Journal is a harmonic layering of audio recordings from the Austin, Texas, immigrant community, a collaborative collection of 1-minute recordings at 11 AM from immigrant communities, and interviews from UMD’s international community. Activated by stepping into a marked circle on the gallery floor, a directional speaker bathes visitors from above in a blend of immigrant stories interwoven with fleeting sounds of daily life. The speaker’s design makes the sound feel as if it emanates from the listener’s own body, creating an intimate, almost internal experience that dissipates upon leaving the listening area, with sound softly spilling from the shower’s edges. Artist Takahashi’s use of a directional speaker here “investigates intimacy, though not necessarily closeness, in public spaces.” The speaker itself embodies a boundary– a threshold– separating the center from the periphery, powerfully demonstrating how voices at the center can overwhelm those on the margins.

Krystof Wodiczko, Monument for the Living, 2020.

Takahashi’s work of using language to hold space for immigrant voices parallels Polish artist Krzysztof Wodiczko’s ongoing projects of documenting the lives of immigrants, refugees, and other marginalized communities. Wodiczko’s Monument (2020) is the superimposition of the likenesses and spoken narratives of twelve resettled refugees onto the 1881 monument to Admiral David Glasgow Farragut in Madison Square Park. Reimagining the statue of this Union hero challenges the preconceived notions of which stories are preserved and honored for future generations– and which are left to fade into obscurity.

Audio Journal uses the act of standing to hold space for immigrant voices, urging visitors to make both a literal and metaphorical commitment to honor the narratives, experiences, and challenges of immigrant communities. Standing becomes an intentional, active exertion of the body—a stance that amplifies voices often overshadowed by dominant narratives. It acknowledges the physical and emotional labor involved in sharing and receiving these stories, inviting visitors to stand, listen, and shower in the sound.

Mami Takahashi’s work is included in We Live in the Sky: Home, Displacement, Identity 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/. 

Current Exhibition

Hidden in Plain Sight: The Paradoxes of Self-Expression in Mami Takahashi’s Writing Myself

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 Noa Nelson

Mami Takahashi’s video performance Writing Myself is a fascinating exploration of identity, language, and the paradoxes of self-expression. In this work, Takahashi uses writing as a tool not to reveal herself but to disappear, turning what could be a deeply personal form of communication into an act of obscuration. By transforming writing into a form of erasure, she invites us to contemplate the contradictions inherent in sharing our experiences while simultaneously shielding them from understanding.

The piece unfolds as Takahashi writes in Japanese –her mother tongue– on transparent film, using this familiar language to express anecdotes, quotes, memories, and thoughts. Born and raised in Tokyo, Takahashi often draws on themes of displacement and distance from home, and the use of Japanese in her work becomes a way of grounding herself within these feelings. The physicality of her process is deliberate and measured, it feels both intimate and meditative. As she writes, the text gradually builds up, creating a dense layer of characters that ultimately forms a barrier between her and the viewer. Her presence, once clearly visible, becomes obscured behind a wall of words, a literal screen of her thoughts that paradoxically makes them unreadable.

In Writing Myself, Takahashi wrestles with the tensions between expression and obscurity. On the one hand, writing is an act of communication—a way to connect, to leave behind a trace of one’s thoughts and experiences. But by layering the text until it becomes indecipherable, she complicates the act of sharing through writing. Her words, meant to be seen, are concealed, much like memories that fade with time or thoughts that lose clarity in translation. This paradox reflects the struggle between the desire to express oneself fully and the instinct to hide or protect certain truths.

  Mami Takahashi, “Writing Myself”, 2015, Single-channel Video, 03:00 min    

Takahashi’s work also comments on the way we face reality or escape from it. Writing, in many ways, serves as a means of confronting one’s experiences, offering a way to make sense of the world. Yet in Writing Myself, writing also becomes a means of retreat—a way for the artist to distance herself from the viewer. As she disappears behind her own words, she creates a space where the boundary between revelation and concealment becomes blurred. It’s as if she is using language to construct a mask, one that hides her while simultaneously revealing the contours of her thoughts.

For those who do not read Japanese, the text remains an opaque screen, inviting them to reflect on the limits of their understanding. Even for those who can read the language, the layering of characters turns the script into a visual rather than legible experience. The tension between the familiar and the inaccessible is present, echoing the complexities of cultural identity and the experiences of those who navigate multiple worlds.

Writing Myself serves as a powerful meditation on the contradictions of self-expression. Takahashi’s methodical writing process becomes an act of introspection, yet the final product is a wall that prevents true insight into her mind. It is a reminder that the act of sharing is never straightforward—every word we offer can also be a means of concealing, and every attempt to communicate can result in further mystery.

Through Writing Myself, Mami Takahashi challenges us to reconsider what it means to understand another person’s experiences. She invites us into her world, only to remind us that some aspects will always remain out of reach. Her piece, like the layers of text she builds, is a beautiful contradiction—an artwork that is as much about what it conceals as what it reveals. It serves as a reminder that art, much like language, is often most powerful when it embraces the spaces between expression and obscurity.

Mami Takahashi’s work is included in We Live in the Sky: Home, Displacement, Identity 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: Home, Displacement, Identity and related events, visit https://stamp.umd.edu/centers/stamp_gallery.

Current Exhibition

Securi ex machina, or Safe from the machine

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

For an instant, I stood in front of Chris Combs’ Pollination (2023). It simultaneously stole my face and voice, projecting a virtual me before the physical me. The real me. I should have felt violated, exposed, but I stayed. I let Pollination search and seize me. I spoke so it could hear me. I was compelled to let it document me. A moment of pirated digitalization transformed into a prolonged, authorized archival of the self for my own benefit. What led me, and many others, to indulge in and consent to Pollination’s surveillance? Are we hoping to see if technology perceives us the way we see ourselves? Or is it the hope that this piece documents our existence forever, so we may never be forgotten? Perhaps the answer lies somewhere in the unearthing of the algorithmic and systematic indulgence of surveillance for the sake of vanity and ego.

Chris Combs, Pollination, 2023. Aluminum, DIN terminal blocks, wire, screens, computers, 5×4.5×4’. Screenshot via artist’s website.

Pollination is an interactive flower-shaped piece that responds to faces and speech. It uses a camera to recognize faces, transforming them into rotating flower-like shapes, while a microphone listens to speech and displays its transcription on multiple small screens. However, Pollination does not fulfill the desire to be forever etched into the ether as nothing is uploaded from the piece. It uses “whisper.cpp” to transcribe audio entirely within the device and the facial recognition is powered by OpenCV. The closed circuited experience of Pollination means the user’s interaction is disposable, ephemeral. It’s a denial of permanent documentation.

Search results of security camera selfies on Pinterest.

On both systemic and individualistic levels, surveillance is often driven by concerns of fear, vulnerability, and a struggle for control. Surveillance pacifies through the external imposition of order, creating an illusion of security and stability through acts of monitoring, predicting, and understanding. However, this sense of authority is often superficial, and surveillance’s inherently parasitic nature demands data for eternity. Only major organizations have been able to harness the beast by overtly passing the labor of watching on to the users. Big tech companies create opportunities for self-surveillance and external monitoring via social media, but rather than creating a sense of control, this often exacerbates feelings of inadequacy and insecurities. Intentionally or unintentionally, users equate their self-worth to their social media metrics and are driven to curate a perfect public image to feel both internal and external validation. The more susceptible users watch themselves and others via digital networks, the more the images and algorithms reinforce their insecurities, where they compare and conflate themselves with the idealized, curated lives on their feeds. This creates a feedback loop where insecurity fuels surveillance, and surveillance fuels further insecurity.

Screenshot of ChatGPT when prompted to consider its own participation in self surveillance.

Ultimately, (self)-surveillance driven by insecurity is an endless and futile pursuit of reassurance as it only temporarily assuages fears– big, existential fears of the unknown, the fear of losing control, the fear of mortality, the fear of fate. The fear that we are here, and then we are gone. This reassurance, however, is fleeting, a temporary respite. The more one surveils, the more one realizes that complete control or total knowledge is impossible. Look Pollination in the eye, speak to its mic, but seek personal satisfaction beyond the screens. 

Chris Combs’ 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. 

Current Exhibition

Paying with Our Time, and From Our Wallets

The Digital Landscape from August 26th to October 5th, 2024 at The Stamp Gallery | University of Maryland, College Park | Written by Rachel Schmid-James

While humans are known for their adaptability, one could argue that the past twenty-something years have been overwhelming regarding technological development. It is often forgotten that the world first began to have the ability to store more digital information than analog technology in 2002. The advancements in digital technology in the past decade have been vast and fast-paced, leading to many conflicting opinions. Some argue that these breakthroughs are the best thing to ever happen, opening new doors for scientific discovery and improved quality of life. Others are more hesitant to embrace it, citing concerns about older and more traditional ways being pushed aside, leaving many behind. 

When it comes to visual arts, digital methods have often faced criticism from those more in tune with traditional mediums and techniques, who fear straying from them will lead to the downfall of art as we know it. However, many artists have instead chosen to embrace and incorporate new and evolving technology into their work. Our current exhibition, titled The Digital Landscape, explores the tensions between the digital and the natural world and the ways digital technologies can be utilized to further artistic expression and improve audience response without inhibiting the artist’s process or technique. 

A perfect example of this tension is found at the very back of the gallery in Chris Combs’ Insert 25 Cents to Feel Something: an interactive piece characterized by its vintage look and its delightful animation that appears when the viewer feeds the machine twenty-five cents. When a quarter is inserted into the work by the viewer, a short video plays of a cat with retro music as the background, each time a different one. I often hear the gasps of joy or the sounds of laughter from my post at the docent desk, and it is infectious. However, as quickly as it begins, the video is over, leaving the audience with only the memory unless they insert another quarter. By creating a sculpture that invokes the viewer’s sense of nostalgia through its older look and sound, Combs adds a new dimension to the ideas behind The Digital Landscape.

Chris Combs, Insert 25 Cents to Feel Something (2024), lens, LCD, steel enclosure, acrylic, polyurethane, coin acceptor, 15x12x7in.

Combs states that he created this piece to comment on consumerism and how the “‘free-of-charge internet’ has been commercialized by mega-platforms and super-national corporations (as they fight monopoly charges in courtrooms).” With access to the internet growing significantly over the past couple of decades, the chance to financially benefit from it has as well.

Combs argues that another form of payment has also been withdrawn from us: our attention and time. It is easy to get sucked into a video on TikTok or scrolling through posts on Instagram, and while both are free monetarily, they still come with a price. The briefness of the cat clip in the tiny circular window of the machine is his way of representing the short dopamine rushes that our brains experience on the internet. To get that joyful feeling again, you have to insert another quarter, recreating the addiction to our phones in everyday life. 

Combs uses digital technology to address his critique of this digital system, creating a fascinating dichotomy that perfectly encapsulates the ideas behind this current exhibition. Like it or not, digital technology is here to stay, so we can either resist or find ways to rearrange the systems so they work for everyone. Not all change has to be bad, and as I said, humans are made for it – we just have to be willing to.

Chris Combs’ work is included in The Digital Landscape at The Stamp Gallery of the University of Maryland, College Park, from August 26th to October 5th, 2024. For more information on Combs, visit https://chriscombs.net/. For more information on The Digital Landscape and related events, visit https://stamp.umd.edu/articles/stamp_gallery_presents_digital_landscape.

Current Exhibition

Seeing Again: An Exploration of Concepts in Margaret Walker’s ‘living’ and ‘dressing’

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Palinopsia from April 23 to May 17, 2024, at The Stamp Gallery | University of Maryland, College Park | Written by Rachel Schmid-James

“The past often repeats itself” is a popular saying in the modern world, but there is much more truth in it than just surface level. When I am performing a task such as cooking or riding the train, I am hit with memories of holding my grandfather’s hand while boarding the MARC or getting flour all over myself while helping my grandmother make red beans and rice. In the Stamp Gallery’s latest exhibition Palinopsia, artist Margaret Walker breathes life into this feeling, showing that the past cannot always be clearly distinguished from the present.

Each artist in this show brought their unique interpretation of the idea of “palinopsia” to this exhibit, each exploring a different aspect of the term. A medical condition, palinopsia causes images to be repeated in a person’s field of vision after the stimuli have been removed. The word itself comes from the combining of the Greek words palin (again) and opsia (seeing), which Walker engages with through exploring the ties between generations. She portrays images of her family members and herself over and over again to encourage the audience to engage with the themes, just as the word palinopsia suggests. 

The first thing the viewer sees when they turn to the left of the gallery is a transparent piece of silk printed with images of a woman covering a series of small, square mirrors. The woman, Walker herself, stands at different angles, her image repeating over and over again side by side, the mirror reflecting not only Walker but the viewer as well. The work, titled dressing, not only uses the body to explore palinopsia but also involves the viewer in the experience. It seems to ask the viewer to reflect on the ways their body and memory interact, as Walker writes in her artist statement that her work “explores the memory of her body as a tool to connect family histories.”

Margaret Walker, dressing (2024), photographic prints on silk, mirrors.

Composed of four hanging photographic prints on silk, her piece living explores generations and family ties, and the repetition of images in the same way people with the condition palinopsia, experience life. Each of the prints depicts Walker, her mother, or her grandmother doing textile work. When looking straight at the prints, which have been hung with space between them, the images of all three women blend, appearing as one person even though the photos were taken years apart. The sheerness of the silk makes each layer appear to float and shift slightly in the breeze, reminiscent of the fleeting nature of memory. The fluidity of the work combined with Walker’s storytelling creates a beautiful testament to the generations that came before each of us. 

Margaret Walker, living (2024), photographic prints on silk.

Both of these pieces present something likely familiar to the audience. In some way or another, every person is inherently connected to the past, especially as it relates to their own family and friends. Even the family or ancestors we never met are still important, for they continue to be seen in the features on our faces or the stories we are told by those who came before us. Just last night I was sitting with my grandmother and my new puppy Zipper when the conversation switched to my late grandfather’s old dog. Although in the moment it was just fun to share the memories and stories we recalled, I realize now when thinking of Walker’s work that it is so much more than that. Someday my grandmother will pass away and it will be up to me to carry on the stories and descriptions I have of her. My children and grandchildren may not know her personally, but just like in Walker’s work I hope they can draw the parallels when looking at photos of me alongside her and consider the fleeting nature of time and generations, but also the deep impact of memory and experience. I hope viewers can see in their own lives the ways palinopsia, or “again seeing,” is present, within their families or otherwise.

Walker’s work is included in Palinopsia at The Stamp Gallery of the University of Maryland, College Park, from April 23 to May 17, 2024.

Artist Interviews, Current Exhibition

Keeping Score: The Auto-Archive of Trevon Jakaar Coleman

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Palinopsia from April 23, to May 17, 2024, at The Stamp Gallery | University of Maryland, College Park | Written by Trinitee Tatum

Viewers must be active participants to uncover the exploration of my own identity, representation, and perceptions within established spaces and genre.

Trevor Jakaar Coleman via website

If the projections flicker and no one is around to see, will they still be in our memories? Do they hold the same weight when no one watches as when we sit and stare? Perhaps Trevon Jakaar Coleman’s series of experimental projections onto quilts, walls, and windows freeze when unviewed, awaiting the audience’s wandering eyes. In witnessing the work, the viewer is challenged to be an active participant, critically thinking about the art’s layered meaning, à la Marshall McLuhan’s notion of cool media. Cool media, as McLuhan writes, is media that requires a high degree of participation on the part of the audience, juxtaposing hot media’s low audience participation. For example, McLuhan writes that lectures are hot media compared to seminars. However, the labeling of hot and cool is relative to other media, and therefore fluid in nature. Coleman, sensitive to mainstream production of hot media that captivates the viewer with illusions and artifice, seeks to defamiliarize typical audience engagement. Coleman interrogates expectations and assumptions of Black self-fashioning by unveiling his repository and fashioning his own world, treating the multitudes of his personhood as an archive to be referenced within the work.

I am going back into my own archive with the things I have held onto since… forever.

Trevor Jakaar Coleman via interview

Trevon Jakaar Coleman, Untitled (Multimedia projection installation), 2024.

Coleman reimagines previous photographs and films, mapping metaphorical projections of himself across the gallery– his community, his travels, his imaginings. Rocks and minerals are superimposed onto portraits of his community of Black creatives in Iowa City and are used to frame nostalgic videos of vast and varied landscapes. Referencing Kathryn Yusoff’s “A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None,” Coleman’s work analyzes the ecological impacts of extracting rocks and minerals and the use of Black bodies as tools to extract said materials. Coleman, who describes his work as a “thought process through material,” incorporates the exploration of new techniques and practices into his work through the presentation of art made from newly acquired skills like quiltmaking in Untitled Quilt #2 (2024) and Untitled (2024). Unafraid to showcase work that might be read as “broken” or “unfinished,” he embraces imperfection and encourages viewers to do the same, confronting the production of hot media that people are quick to consume, yet not digest. Simultaneously, Coleman protests the politics of respectability, asserting that art that resists normative expectations and the status quo should not be suppressed. 

Trevon Jakaar Coleman, Untitled Quilt #2 (Multimedia), 2024.

Untitled Quilt #2 (2024) is fashioned out of acquired materials like discarded mat boards from fellow caricaturists from his time as a caricaturist in South Carolina. He scanned photographs and comics, printed them onto fabrics, and sewed them together to make a quilt. Quiltmaking’s historical position in the African American community is archival at its most potent – deeply charged with collective memory, community building, and resistance work. All of these aspects of Coleman’s work solidifies archives as a repeated motif, both through the subject matter and material. 

Of Greek origin, palin for “again,” and opsia for “seeing,” Palinopsia, in this reading, is the remembering and recreating of memories until infinity. It’s the superimposition of conscious states, the public projection of what privately lies beneath. Coleman’s art materializes the shifting of memories, the bits of self that rise to the surface again and again, waiting for the viewer to reach out and touch. 

Trevon Jakaar Coleman’s work is included in Palinopsia at The Stamp Gallery of the University of Maryland, College Park, from  April 23, to May 17, 2024.

For more information on Trevon Jakaar Coleman, visit http://www.trevonjakaar.com/.

 

Current Exhibition, Explore, Uncategorized

Exploring Reality in Palinopsia

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Palinopsia from April 23 to May 17, 2024 at The Stamp Gallery | University of Maryland, College Park | Written by Ellen Zhang

What is palinopsia? Palinopsia refers to a fascinating visual phenomenon where individuals repeatedly see images even after the original visual stimuli have disappeared. In the exhibition Palinopsia, artists Trevon Jakaar Coleman, Jill Stauffer, Varvara Tokareva, and Margaret Walker offer their unique perspectives on what is real versus seen, inviting visitors to delve into the realm of perception and interpretation.

According to Coleman’s website, his works aim to “challenge expectation, iconography, language, and space, creating a distance that leaves room for inquiry” (http://www.trevonjakaar.com/). In Palinopsia, Coleman’s works draw inspiration from comic books and other non-fiction sources. The alien-like figures and terrain are what make his works particularly captivating. At the same time, there are elements of the real world. For instance, in Untitled Creatures #1-4, videos of natural landscapes are encapsulated by what seem like extraterrestrial beings. By blurring the line between reality and fiction, Coleman challenges the idea of the world we know. Is there more to what is visible to us? Is there another world that we are not capable of seeing? Another way in which Coleman achieves his broader purpose of “leav[ing] room for inquiry” is how he titles his work. All four pieces in Palinopsia begin with “untitled” in their names. This suggests that Coleman wants the viewer to engage in his work actively. He encourages his audience to rely on their individual perception to create meaning from his work rather than setting an expectation for what his work represents via a title. 

Trevon Jakaar Coleman, Untitled Creatures #1-4 (2024), Mixed Media.

Tokareva’s work, in particular, compliments the underlying themes of Coleman’s pieces. What I found most intriguing about her pieces is how she incorporates different AI tools to portray history. Her research delves into the “New East”, utilizing archival visuals “to capture a significant change within society” as described on her website (https://printingmadnessforever.com/). Looking through the eyes of the audience, discerning the extent that the original source materials (from the Olympics) have been manipulated by AI proves challenging, prompting the question of AI’s authenticity. Like Coleman, Tokareva blurs the line between what is real and what isn’t by drawing attention to the unreliability of perception. More specifically, her work reiterates the importance of knowing the source of information. In Utopia III, three TV screens display videos of the Olympic Games in Soviet Moscow in July 1980. To what extent do these AI-generated videos include real elements of the Olympic Games? Can we even distinguish what’s real or not if our perception of the East is biased? Those that view her work, knowing that it incorporates AI, will question the authenticity of the content and walk away without a set opinion. In Tokareva’s work, the line between reality and AI is blurred due to the Western gaze, largely dictated by Western media forms, of what the East was and what it is now. 

Varvara Tokareva, Utopia III (2023-2024), Three-Channel Video on Three Monitors.

Coleman and Tokareva’s works capture the inconsistency of perspective and consequent interpretation by prompting their audience to wonder what is real and what isn’t. In the same way that palinopsia works, their works serve as visual phenomena that merge real and perceived. The significance of doing so is that we, as audience members, are compelled to reconsider our preconceptions and confront the complexities of our visual and ideological perspectives. Through their art, we are pushed to reconsider what we know to be true: our interpretations of space, history, and culture. By challenging our understanding, their art sparks intellectual dialogue while encouraging the exploration and acceptance of diverse perspectives.

Trevon Jakaar Coleman and Varvara Tokareva’s works are included in Palinopsia at The Stamp Gallery of the University of Maryland, College Park, from April 23 to May 17, 2024. Coleman will be hosting a Analog Projection Workshop with Jill Stauffer April 29, 7-9pm. Tokareva will be hosting a Cyanotype Workshop with Margaret Walker May 7, 3-4pm. Both events are free and open to the public. For more information on Coleman, visit trevonjakaar.com and on Instagram @trevonjakaar. For more information on Tokareva, visit https://printingmadnessforever.com/. For more information on Palinopsia and related events, visit https://stamp.umd.edu/centers/stamp_gallery.