Tag Archives: Contemporary Art

Current Exhibition

Shelter and Language in Tori Ellison’s Sky Writing

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

What is a home? Is it a shelter? A place where we are safe? Our families and friends? What happens when one becomes adrift, and in need of a new home? These are the questions that Sky Writing asks visitors when they enter the Gallery. Comprised of six panels draped from the ceiling along the Gallery’s window display, visitors can walk through the array of panels that each contain different prints inspired by submissions from international students attending UMD as well as Tori Ellison’s artwork, in collaboration UMD MFA Candidate Varvara Tokareva.

The first and third panels display a bird species called Swifts who spend much of their time in the air, migrating from place to place as they continuously seek new shelters. Complimenting this, the back side of the panel contains 7,139 words for “shelter” in spoken languages, and 293 in written languages from across the world. Together, they represent immigrants in the historical narrative of the US wherein those seeking a new home, shelter, and economic stability come to the States as “birds of passage” much like the airborne Swifts on the panels. A narrative that has always fluctuated, and one that in light of recent years become more prominent, making spaces like our University where many immigrants or second-generation can find and take shelter a lifeline for many, where they can freely express their languages and cultures.

Specifically, Natalie Molina highlights how immigrants in the US have very often been treated as these “birds of passage” – brazos fuertes – who since the 1910s come from overseas or land to get a job, before being sent back to their home countries only to repeat the cycle over again (Molina 163). The unity in the languages included on the panels thus acts as a cry against being a swift or bird species that is in a constant state of placelessness. They represent the desire to find a home, a shelter, the desire held by international students like those who contributed to Sky Writing to have stability and define their own identities beyond the label of ‘immigrant’. 

Tori Ellison, Sky Writing, 2024. Screenprinting, paper, paint and wood, 8 1/2 x 36 in each.

But what does “home” mean for international students attending UMD? The second and fourth panels are based on contributions from UMD students and College Park community members who provide answers to that inquiry. Three phrases are displayed on the second panel as answers to Ellison’s question. The consensus was that “home” could be anything from a house, a sense of belonging, a neighbourhood community, and oftentimes chosen family. The fourth panel is a few short statements written in Japanese by a student attending UMD, who highlights similar views about how home is a place of safety, and how irreplaceable it is to them since to have a home is to be whole. 

Having lived outside of the US for much of my childhood, viewing other students’ responses in Sky Writing, particularly the back of the first and the front of the second panel hit home for me. I grew up mainly in Singapore (among other countries), and looking through Ellison’s piece felt both nostalgic and uplifting. Going to an international school where children would often only stay for a year before leaving through elementary and middle school, I got to interact with so many people from very different backgrounds, especially at school festivals, while also experiencing the “bird of passage” loss when friends would move away. Seeing the unity in the hundreds of words for “shelter”, as well as how other students like myself valued the need to have a sense of belonging, stability, and oftentimes chosen family due to the nature of moving to new places so regularly, was reassuring and validating. It also pressed the importance of places like the University, where immigrants can feel safe and find communities on campus at places like MICA, the multicultural centre, and the vast amount of student unions or organisations for Latine, Asian and Pacific Islanders that celebrate their identities as a home-like place. 

This, combined with Pablo Neruda’s “Sonnet 94” on the fifth panel, and Varvara Tokareva’s print on the sixth panel, again answers the question that Ellison puts forward about what home means to us. That the lack of a shelter, a home to return to in order to find comfort, whether that home is a place or a person, creates a sense of exile, isolation, and colourlessness. Together, all six panels in Sky Writing highlight the necessity of a home that pervades every other artwork in We Live in the Sky since each panel highlights how UMD students and College Park residents value home and how it defines their identity, and how the disruption or displacement of their home destroys their sense of self and belonging, because without a home to shelter in they would be just like a swoop of swifts coasting through the skies. 

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 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. 

Uncategorized

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

Assimilation, Loss, and Home in Kat Navarro’s Kalapati Without a House

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

The process of immigration has always been a difficult one, no matter the time, place, or people involved in it. What most people don’t fully recognise, though, is that immigration is more than the journey alone. More than the arrival off a boat or the crossing of a border,it is a process that starts before the journey is taken, and in the case of a successful journey, continues for years after. 

I’ve personally experienced this process multiple times, having moved repeatedly across many different countries that I’ve called home in Asia. The feelings of uncertainty that come with repeatedly losing friends, a sense of familiarity, and over time a slow degradation in my own native French that my mother and I continue to speak over the years as we moved from China, to Singapore, to Korea, and then to the States. Wherein the process partially assimilated us into each place as we learned to call them all home before having to leave each one as we engaged with the many cultures and people in these countries. 

In our current exhibition, The Digital Landscape, there is no better representation of these layered notions of home, assimilation, loss, and language that come about due to immigration than Kat Navarro’s Kalapati Without a House. Tucked away in the Gallery’s nook at the very front of the Gallery, visitors can sit and watch Navarro’s animation where every two minutes, hands that support a Bahay Kubo (a kind of house indigenous to the Philippines) strip away a part of it until the last hand drifts beneath the waves. As this occurs, less and less of the animated birds come to roost in the Bahay Kubo, a parallel to the how the pigeons that Navarro’s family raised in the Philippines slowly left one by one before her family immigrated to Baltimore. 

Kat Navarro, Kalapati Without a House, 2023. Mix Media animation project, 16:00.

By animating a symbolic representation of her family’s experience with immigration overlaid with narration by her Tito (uncle) and Lola (grandmother) in Tagalog, Navarro’s animation captures many aspects of immigration. The loss of home and everything that was once familiar to her family in the past, the slow degradation of language that came with and continues to come with assimilating into another country, and the need to construct a new home in an initially unfamiliar and oftentimes hostile environment.

It specifically acts as a reflection of the past, of a version of a place that was once “home” that likely doesn’t exist anymore today as it once did decades ago, or at least to a recognisable degree. The animation is also a snapshot of the present and future where immigration continues to break down oral storytelling and language over time, evident in the untranslated narration of Navarro’s Tito and Lola as an ongoing part of their assimilation into American culture, while still retaining some of it by talking to one another.

Conversely, while Kalapati Without a House embodies loss that stems from immigration, the animation also embodies the notion of survival. Navarro’s family, like many immigrant families across the globe, persist despite the loss of the Bahay Kubo and untranslated Tagalog dialogue. Though difficult to create, I believe that the animation creates a sense of hope and familial unity amid the pain of losing one’s home and connections like her family’s pigeons to one’s original home. In the wake of assimilation and the degradation of culture, immigrants survive and work to resist this post-journey development to build new homes for themselves and their children. A new home in a new landscape, a home that will resist and survive the fate of its predecessor who can only exist in a digital environment like Navarro’s animation. 

Kat Navarro’s 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 Navarro, visit https://katnavarro.com/About-Contact-1. For more information on The Digital Landscape and related events, visit https://stamp.umd.edu/articles/stamp_gallery_presents_digital_landscape.

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.

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. 

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Subjugating Spaces and Bodily Autonomy: Resistance with Michelle Lisa Herman

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

As a woman with disabilities, my work is often multisensory and immersive, as I feel it is important to provide multiple ways for people to experience the artwork.

Michelle Lisa Herman

Every day, we navigate the architecture that surrounds us, interacting with buildings, walkways, and streets that were designed and approved by planners and stakeholders. But who truly defines the physical and social purposes of our spaces? Whose needs and experiences are prioritized in the creation of our environments? The Digital Landscape features three of Michelle Lisa Herman’s multimedia works that deconstruct the history of stigmatizing narratives surrounding disability, and to give viewers the agency to reimagine the body as it is in space. 

What inspires and drives the design of architecture? This pressing question is central to Herman’s exploration of physical and social spaces. Self-identifying as a woman with disabilities, Herman critiques the hegemony that buildings and institutions of power support. Untitled (To Bear the Weight) #2 (2022) is a small video installation that projects Herman’s moving body on a paper model of Bremen’s town hall. Viewers can circle the entire model, allowing for an interpersonal viewing experience. Herman’s inspiration for this piece was found after observing 16th-century architecture during her exchange program in Bremen, Germany. 

Michelle Lisa Herman, Untitled (To Bear the Weight) #2, 2022. Video installation. Video courtesy of the Artist.

The medium of the video projection connects the themes of communication, societal norms, and technology of The Digital Landscape. Acting as the pillars, columns, and arcways, Herman uses her body to make an unconventional impression. The most notable part of the piece is the reference to Leonardo DaVinci’s Vitruvian Man. The iconography of the Vitruvian Man portrayed by Herman’s body emphasizes the dominant, Eurocentric nature of architectural design. Incorporating her body into the building forms a powerful message of resistance against the idealized calculations of the “white, able male body”, as described by Herman. In realizing this connection, Herman challenges the viewer to rethink how power and design are interconnected. Beyond the physical spaces that surround us, the unnoticed, invisible roots of power fuel systems of oppression through collective ignorance. 

Untitled (Construction) #2 (2024) and Untitled (Construction) #8 (2024) are from the same collection of works using casts of Herman’s limbs to build structural forms. This series combines the delicate positions of her arms and hands in tandem with other objects to create a surreal composition. The visual contrast of the organic and rigid forms among the colorful lighting conveys an archaic feel reminiscent of historically European, marble buildings.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Michelle Lisa Herman, Untitled (Construction) #2 and #8, 2024. Giclee on fabric mounted to aluminum. Images courtesy of the Artist.

Herman’s pieces demonstrate the importance of activist art and critical messaging through media. Instead of encouraging stereotypical narratives, Herman reclaims what is stolen from artists with disabilities. Reminiscent of the “Supercrip” label, disability should not be an inspirational model for non-disabled people. Agency to those working against instilled norms of disability, Herman’s work reflects upon independence from oppressive institutions. She reminds us of the reality that many marginalized identities face daily about their bodies. The fetishization of disability thrives from portraying it as a superpower, obscuring the very real experiences behind it.   

The ways we navigate the world are defined by the bodies we were born with and the boundaries set by society. However, Michelle Lisa Herman is one of many voices that address the importance of inclusive design and solidarity for marginalized groups. While it can be easy to assume that our reality is fully optimized, broadening our senses and perspectives is essential for embracing the experiences of others. In presenting The Digital Landscape, both To Bear the Weight and Construction subjugate the social constructions that define our public and private spaces. 

Michelle Lisa Herman’s 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 Michelle Lisa Herman, visit https://www.michellelisaherman.com/.  For more information on The Digital Landscape and related events, visit https://stamp.umd.edu/centers/stamp_gallery.