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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. 

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/.

 

Contemporary Art Purchasing Program (CAPP), Current Exhibition, Uncategorized

Bending the Binary, and Our Perception of History

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What We Do After from August 28 to September 30, 2023, at The Stamp Gallery | University of Maryland, College Park | Written by Rachel Schmid-James

When Brian Van Camerik began the project Homosocial, a collection of old photographs showing intimacy amongst same sex couples from the past in 2017, it could not have come at a better time. With President Donald Trump beginning his reign of terror on queer people across the country, it seemed very difficult to find hope and joy in queerness. For many young queer people, being different can feel isolating, and due to crises such as the AIDS epidemic leading to fewer older queer people, they have less elders to guide them. With Homosocial, Van Camerik shows that queer love and joy has always been around- even in times of great hardship. As described on the project’s website, “these photographs span decades and all depict same-gendered couples of men, women, and everyone in between displaying intimacy towards one another.” Throughout the series, multiple pairs are seen as described; some with arms around one another, others with hands clasped. However, what stood out to me is that none of the photographs feature the couples kissing. This adds to the power of the pieces. Queer love was forbidden in most societies in the past, and public displays of it could lead to detainment, violence, death, and/or ostracism. Many of these couples no doubt had to hide their love for each other, though that does not make these small moments captured any less romantic. It adds a deep layer of nuance, and calls attention to a hard truth: public romance is treated as a privilege.

Homosocial, Processing Gender Aspirations (2022), Silver gelatin print, paper, ink.

Throughout the run of the Stamp Gallery exhibit What We Do After, the piece Processing Gender Aspirations from Homosocial has always stood out to me. Although small in dimension and seemingly simple in composition, the depth within the artwork and the project itself makes a deep impact. On a background reminiscent of rippling water flecked through with gold, a black and white photograph is centered. The photograph shows a child dressed in a uniform-like outfit complete with Mary Jane shoes. The child’s gender is not obvious, nor is it specified by artist Brian Van Camerik. Two paired sets of zig zagged lines attach the photo to three simple words, creating the phrase “bending the binary.” As explained by Van Camerik in an Instagram post for the piece, 

I use microprocessing technology as a visual metaphor to illustrate how the individuals in these photographs have connected—the same way that microchips are connected on a circuit board… As a non-binary artist, I am presenting someone I wish to emulate. And while aspirational, this piece is also transgressive. Microprocessing technology operates in binary code but somehow the child thrives within this system and defies the gender binary to boot.

 Processing Gender Aspirations is one of the few pieces in the Homosocial project that features only one figure, and one who also does not fit traditional ideas of the gender binary. As Van Camerik explains above, the child in this piece reflects a quiet rebellion, existing in a normal life as a person who “bends the binary.”

More than anything though, this entire series represents something that was as important back then as it is now, that queer people are normal. The poses in the photographs are no different from any photograph you may see of a cisgendered or heterosexual couple, pushing against the idea that queer people are dangerous or deviant. Queer people love and live just like anyone else does, something important to represent especially with all the anti-gay and anti-transgender legislation popping up all over the country. Joy is essential to change, something expressed through the Homosocial collection as well as the current CAPP exhibit at the Stamp Gallery. At the very bottom of the Homosocial website, a dedication can be found, reading “For the individuals who were lost, silenced, or hurt because of whom they loved.” Remembering the faces of those who came before in the struggle for LGBTQ rights and their joy in the face of adversity can help us find our way and begin to build a better life for all people. 

Homosocial’s work is included in What We Do After at The Stamp Gallery of the University of Maryland, College Park, from August 28 to September 30, 2023.

Artist Interviews, Contemporary Art Purchasing Program (CAPP), Current Exhibition, Explore

Mentorship Behind the Making of The Royal Blue Series (and more from the series)

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What We Do After from August 28 to October 6, 2023 at The Stamp Gallery | University of Maryland, College Park | Written by Isabella Chilcoat

“Life is about give and give, not give and take.”

Beverly Price
(Beverly Price, conversation between the artist and the author on 9/12/2023).

There’s something about Beverly Price’s Royal Blue Series that takes the photographs beyond the wall. Judging from the insights Price shared this past February, during the CAPP cohort’s visit to the community focused artist residency program, the Nicholson Project, as well as recent discussions we’ve had, it is clear that the Royal Blue Series is significant for its impact on the subjects and the awareness it draws to DC neighborhoods. 

Born and raised in Washington, D.C., Beverly Price has centered her art practice  and her education so far within the D.M.V. area. The artist studied business, organizational leadership and liberal arts at Georgetown University, and later, she completed a Master of Fine Arts in photographic and electronic media at Maryland Institute College of Art. She has exhibited and featured works at the National Museum of Women in the Arts (museum shop), Anacostia Art Center, Maryland Institute College of Art, American University, Virginia Commonwealth University, and more (courtesy of the artist’s website). 

Price’s career as both an artist and an activist hold firm roots within youth and community advocacy and involvement. Over the last five years, she has served in a variety of agencies and institutions throughout Baltimore City and her home, Washington D.C., as an empathetic educator and resident artist. You could trace her footprints to the American University, the Latin American Youth Center, Forest Park High School (Baltimore), and Charles Hart Middle School (Washington, D.C.) to name a few. Furthermore, Price instructed a Teen Residency Workshop Series at The Nicholson Project, where she was also an artist in residence until March of 2023 (courtesy of the artist’s website).

Price’s fervent investment in D.C. communities, observable in her Royal Blue Series, stems from her own experiences with loss of innocence and its impact on her life. In 2002, Price was sentenced to five years in prison as a senior in high school. When she returned home from prison at age 23, she decided to dedicate her life and her art practice to her continued growth and to the benefit of her community (courtesy of the artist’s website). Describing her experience teaching and working with youth in D.C. neighborhoods, she said, “life is about give and give… not give and take.” She expressed how giving is a key takeaway she wants to leave with younger generations, especially in underserved communities.

The Royal Blue Series dives into the heart of a D.C. neighborhood to demonstrate not only how children are directly affected by cycles of violence, but also how art can channel those experiences into healing with the opportunity for restoration and compensation. Price set out to explore adolescence and Black boys’ experiences growing up in D.C. at the onset of the project, and found motivation in uncovering ways to protect the innocence of Black boys in America. To create this series, Price collaborated with a group of adolescent boys in 2019, facing the aftermath of a murder of their brother and friend, 11-year-old Karon Brown. In the wake of this trauma, Price photographed the boys playing and hanging out – gathering in shared spaces like the playground. While building a relationship with them and taking their photos, Price also compensated the boys for their participation.

In Long Live Baby K, 2019, the child on the left is seen wearing a shirt in remembrance of Karon Brown. 2022 Silver Gelatin Print (Pearl), 11x14in. (courtesy of the artist’s website)

Price emphasized that she wants to show the boys that they can and will be compensated for their work in the art world. She hopes to impart on them that creative work, especially photography, can be an alternative source of income in addition to being a creative outlet as they work through their emotions. 

Accordingly, on one of her 2022 visits with the (now) teenage boys, she spent a day teaching them how to take photos and letting them use her camera to photograph each other. Over the course of the Royal Blue Series’ movement through exhibitions, art collections, publications, Price has endeavored to share this journey with the boys however she can, and to be a resource to her young collaborators in their creative development. The series photograph, Ray, 2022, depicts one of the children handling Price’s camera and peering into the lens. 

In Ray, 2022, The adolescent boy (left) is seen handling Price’s camera and peering into the lens. 2022 Silver gelatin print (pearl), 11x14in. (courtesy of the artist’s website)

Price is finding ways to keep the next generation’s attention by sharing creative practices that can engage emotions while generating an income stream. Now, when I view Price’s photography, I am hearing her voice play in my head, “give and give…not give and take.”

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Beverly Price’s work is included in What We Do After at The Stamp Gallery of the University of Maryland, College Park, from August 28  to October 6, 2022.

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RESOURCE(S):

  1. Price, Beverly, “Meet Beverly,” 2023. Artist Website, 2023. https://www.beverlypricephoto.com/royal-blue-the-essence-of-innocence 
  2. Price Beverly, “The Royal Blue Series (The Essence of Innocence), 2022. Artist Website, 2023. https://www.beverlypricephoto.com/royal-blue-the-essence-of-innocence 
  3. Price/Chilcoat Discussion, September 12, 2023.
  4. Artist Talk with Beverly Price for CAPP, at the Nicholson Project, February 2023.
Contemporary Art Purchasing Program (CAPP), Current Exhibition, Uncategorized

Natural Fragility from Argentina to Greenland and Beyond; Ingrid Weyland’s Topographies of Fragility V as a warning about the impacts of overusing Earth’s resources

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Topographies of Fragility V from August 28th to September 30th, 2023, at The Stamp Gallery | University of Maryland, College Park | Written by James Cho

Mounted on a wall in the latter half of the Gallery facing visitors as they enter the exhibit is Ingrid Weyland’s Topographies of Fragility V archival pigment print. Born from a return trip across the world where she witnessed how unchecked human abuse of the natural world, Fragility V stands as an outcry against humanity’s role in climate destruction. 

Ingrid Weyland, Topographies of Fragility V, 2019. Archival pigment print, edition 6/7.

Akin to many before and after photos, Weyland masterfully bridges the past and present in Fragility V. By layering a scrunched-up copy of the print on top of a flat version, Weyland symbolises the destruction of nature in how the untouched beauty of an Argentinian forest she visited in the past has deteriorated since then. In the same way that Weyland scrunched up the identical print beyond repair, visitors can observe how the damage done to this forest is practically impossible to restore, and ponder what it might have looked like during her initial visit. 

Importantly, Weyland’s message extends beyond Argentina to the rest of the world, where humans both directly and indirectly impact the natural world. Places such as the Amazon rainforest, originally an area of nearly seven million square kilometres, has lost about twenty percent of its forests. Comparatively, that would be like if the US lost a natural environment the size of California and Kentucky put together.  In the image comparison below of satellite captures of the rainforest in 1985 and 2016, the red indicates vegetation and is visibly reduced in the second image. As in the case with the forest in Topographies of Fragility V, the rainforests of the Amazon will likely never grow back, or if they do, it will be with difficulty. Deforestation of the trees disrupts the symbiotic relationship that the trees have with organisms in the soil. Namely, these organisms in the soil or on the roots of the trees provide hard-to-gather nutrients to the trees like nitrogen from the decomposing biomass (since the soil itself is close to infertile) in exchange for a portion of the energy that the trees get from photosynthesis. The loss of the trees leads to the death of this niche set of organisms, meaning that regrowing a rainforest may be near-impossible due to the loss of this previously natural symbiosis. The comparisons may not seem mind-blowing in the before/after images below, but remember that these photographs were taken by satellites that are far above the earth!

Photographs by the ESA (European Space Agency) of the northwestern section of the Amazon Rainforest.

Similarly, Greenland’s ice sheets have been losing 270 billion metric tons of ice every year. Below is a visualisation of that loss of ice by NASA since 2002 alone, which shows how over the course of the life of many college students at UMD today, water levels from this ice loss have increased dramatically. 

By providing us with a visual representation of the dire situation we find ourselves in across the globe, Weyland’s Topography of Fragility V represents what we cannot allow to continue. Because it is not What We Do After we reach the tipping point of deforestation, ice sheet melting, or climate change as a whole, but What We Do Before that matters. Before we lose not only the trees, but also the animals and other wildlife that depend on the environment formed by the trees. Before the rising water levels produced by the melted ice sheets engulf or partly engulf cities like Annapolis, London, Shanghai, Mumbai, Tokyo, and the like underwater by 2050—which doesn’t account for countries that are already facing high floods or are partly underwater already, nor for other natural wonders like the Great Barrier Reef that faces total destruction within our lifetimes. 

Comment, Current Exhibition, Explore

A Reflection to Remember: Teach Me How to Love This World

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Teach Me How to Love This World from October 19 to December 10, 2022 at The Stamp Gallery | University of Maryland, College Park | Written by Ellen Zhang

Bold red streaks, ominous ringing, whirrings of rotating projector shutters… each piece in Teach Me How to Love This World plays an integral part in illustrating a past, present, and future world grappling with violence and peace. What I like about Kei Ito’s work is that it’s direct and straightforward without undermining its complexities. As a viewer, I am amazed by how he has balanced artistic choices, abstract themes (like the meaning of peace), and the factuality of the impacts of nuclear war. Together, these three elements create the necessary experience of being caught off guard that precedes a stage of reflection. 

Stepping foot into this exhibition for the very first time, the piece that caught my attention was Teach Me How to Love This World: Sacrifice. The immediate appearance of a blood-red peace sign dripping down the canvas is jarring, intimidating, and contradicting. The perception of tranquility, from the peace symbol, is intruded by the blood-red color, enhancing Ito’s message that peace doesn’t come without fatal sacrifice. Ito reflects the destructive nature of war weapons through artistic choices that don’t sugarcoat and, instead, speak volumes on how nuclear war is a source of fear and intimidation. For those that are conflict-avoidant like me, an initial glimpse is enough to instill a sense of trepidation and uneasiness. 

Kei Ito, Teach Me How to Love This World: Sacrifice, 2022. Unprimed canvas, spray paint, print on aluminum dibond, 36x48x3 in.

The question of “whose peace, whose sacrifice” splattered across the top and bottom of the canvas adds to the power of the piece. It’s a transparent move that introduces perplexing questions between humanity and war, unlike the sanitized version we often get from the mainstream media. By proposing the question of “whose peace, whose sacrifice,” Ito also eases the viewer into a stage of reflection: Who are the victims of nuclear war? Who benefits from it? Is there even a clear distinction between the two or are we all unknowing victims of nuclear war? While I haven’t found the answers to these questions, I appreciate how Ito’s work is centralized in questions rather than statements. Nothing is definitive and, perhaps, this is on purpose. Ito breaks the stigma of reflecting on war by encouraging us, the viewers, to weigh on an integral theme of conflict: someone’s peace is brought through someone else’s suffering. During Ito’s artist talk, he even encouraged his audience to consider everyday life through the lens of sacrifice, war, and peace. For example, he mentioned how fast fashion is one of many suppressed examples of those benefiting from another’s exploitation. 

Situated in the center of the canvas is an inverted photograph of a goat receiving a blood transfusion by three masked doctors. Here, Ito adds additional layers of identity, fact, and questioning. The presence of a goat pays homage to the significance of animals ingrained in Japanese culture. At the same time, the photograph is rooted in factual evidence that depicts the devastating effects of atomic bomb testing. The original photograph was taken by George Skadding in 1947 and captures the moment when a goat, exposed to radiation from an A-bomb test on Bikini Atoll Island, receives a blood transfusion as it lies strapped to a surgical table at the Bethesda Naval Medical Research Institute, MD. Reflecting on the photo with its historical backdrop in mind subjects the viewer to numerous questions: Why did Ito choose a historical moment that took place in Maryland? Why is the photograph placed where it is? Why is it inverted? With no answers in plain sight, we are encouraged to ponder the artistic choices Ito has made. To me, Teach Me How to Love This World: Sacrifice is a piece that embodies reflection. And quite literally, the contents on the canvas are mirrored, portraying the interdependent relationship between those who enjoy peace and those who sacrifice. At the same time, the viewers can reflect on how power and politics determine who is impacted by war. The photograph alone is a testament to how some, if not all, can have their peace stripped from them at any given moment and with no say at all. 

Despite the way Ito explores the dichotomy between peace and war, his exhibition is certainly not despairing in nature. By balancing the factual and the abstract, he breaks the silence on taboo subjects and builds fruitful conversations, open to anyone regardless of their background, belief systems, and ideas. Ito brings a sense of vulnerability into the gallery, graciously inviting us to explore, and prompting reflections to remember. 

Teach Me How to Love This World: Kei Ito will be on view in The Stamp Gallery at the University of Maryland, College Park from October 19 through December 10, 2022. For more information on Kei Ito and his work, visit http://www.kei-ito.com/.

Comment, Current Exhibition, Explore

Teach Me How to Love Myself

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Teach Me How to Love This World from October 19  to December 10, 2022  at The Stamp Gallery | University of Maryland, College Park | Written by Isabella Chilcoat

My typical approach to articulating each exhibition by the Stamp Gallery over the past year and a half has involved a level of formal artistic analysis and critique. However Teach Me How to Love This World: Kei Ito plucked a chord in my being that I feel calls for a more intimate reading. Ito’s current solo exhibition manifests not only a physical presence, but also a profound psychological phenomenon of deep empathy and contemplation. His works plunge my own mind into an abyss of chilling curiosity – they cast a red-hued light of extrospection on my own inner tribulations. Themes of generational trauma, visible and invisible wounds, violence, destruction, rebirth, and peace radiate from the six works on view, and each piece contains a piercing capacity to connect its viewer with a larger history surrounding them. Ito’s work certainly has prompted me to deepen my inward self-exploration as it connects to generational wounds that bleed into my present.

Aptly titled, Into the Abyss (2022), a unique C-Print of sunlight developed film, hangs on the Gallery’s entrance wall, a rectangular plate of aluminum dibond emblazoned with blood-red word pairings against its smooth black surface. The text couples a pronoun and a noun, pronoun + noun, pronoun + noun, pronoun + noun… endlessly in columns that eventually obscure toward the bottom. These groupings compose a solemn poetry to ponder while sojourning through and beyond the gallery walls with phrases pertaining to: “their + war,” “his + war,” “his + weapons,” “your + weapons,” “your + peace.” With a repetition that references an obsessive compulsive sequence of words, Into the Abyss forces me to recall my own journey through healing the consequences of generational trauma.

Kei Ito, Into the Abyss, 2022. Unique C-Print film mounted on aluminum dibond, laminate, 40x32x1 in.

Though different circumstances, Ito’s encapsulation of heirloom agony, or legacies of passed down emotional damages, is something that resonates in a myriad of settings yet lacks the recognition and understanding it deserves. I particularly love this print because it echoes a period in my early childhood where I would repeat a list of the same, completely arbitrary “safe” phrases in instances of high anxiety in a set numerical quantity. As a child the specific recitation of my “safe” words calmed my autonomic nervous system as an act of defense in a situation in which I felt my safety or autonomy was compromised. In retrospect of more than fifteen years (and with professionally guided coping strategies) I can still remember my “safe” phrases – no longer with a feeling of desperate relief, but a feeling of grief for a waning childhood of which I had little concept at the time and a stronger desire to console my child self and restore a sense of security. Ito’s phrases, while clearly intentionally correlated, illustrate the sequences of inner thoughts in an ordered but increasingly blurry image synonymous with memory. Memories of my “safe” words, survival mechanisms, and certain traumatic instances of my life flicker through my mind like an orderly reel of film or text until the clarity vanishes in a manner similar to the visual qualities of Into the Abyss and other works in the Stamp Gallery, including a dual Kodak slide projection piece titled Teach Me How to Love This World (2022), in which the same pronoun + noun couples project on the wall.

Kei Ito, Teach Me How to Love This World, 2022. 35mm slide, Kodak carousel projectors.

Ito’s exhibition has offered a narrative and a solidarity to trauma by employing the acute dichotomy between war and peace. His work in the gallery also translates the severity of war and of peace individually. If I relate these concepts to my own journey with mental health I can visualize how my mind and my body have at times existed at war with one another, both seeking the same peace from trauma, but disconnected. The lack of harmony enables a cascade of conflict, confusion, and fear. Being at war with the self or warring (in survival mode) against a harmful situation unfolds in a complex manner, especially if that trauma is carried through multiple generations. The devastations of war can bare themselves physically, but often, as the scars fade, the invisible wounds, emotional traumas, anxiety, trauma-induced ADHD, PTSD, and cPTSD rage more severely. The sinister aftermath of battle (both literal and metaphorical), when the dust has settled, too often leaves the survivor’s remaining injuries unrecognized, unfinished, on the inside, and sometimes resurfacing as panic attacks, racing heart rates, an urge to flee—the list goes on. There is seldom peace immediately after a trauma. Without proper time and care for wounds to heal, injuries can fester and compound. War and peace are not black and white; the space between is easier to leave hidden, but that gray space is also the only ground for true healing. The path to peace can take generations, making “peace” no easy feat. Accordingly, some of the world’s best efforts at “keeping the peace” do little more than apply palliative bandages after onslaughts of violence to cover a deadly (unsightly) injury. 

Occupying the floor with ash on a panel of wood, Riddle of Peace/War (2022-ongoing) considers these layered topics by questioning who will ultimately be sacrificed for either “war” or “peace.” A misconstrued conception of the means by which to secure peace tips a violent scale for which humanity will always pay the price. Additionally, the individual handling of “war” and “peace” can also stand as a microcosm for the global struggle. Seeking peace internally can create desperation as it does within larger politics with fear and anxiety at their core. This desperation, anxiety, and fear screams, “seek peace BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY.” However, speaking from the individual level, I have only been able to grasp authentic peace within myself through a place of care and unconditional love for the covered parts of myself deemed unfit to express in the open. Releasing blame, shame, and fear and growing in empathy for the parts of myself and my childhood that I was conditioned to keep hidden have been the only ways to work through the traumas in my own story and continue growing from a stronger foundation. Aptly constructing and simultaneously destroying the distinctions between “war” and “peace,” Ito’s exhibition demonstrates the necessity of considering life from multiple angles and reveals that nothing is truly black and white. Furthermore, my “path to peace” is an evolving effort, but at its center I have been learning to remove the shame in an effort to understand all parts of myself, just as Ito removes shaming from his exhibition for those who inflict violence in their efforts for “peace” recalled in his works. Even the title of the exhibition, Teach Me How to Love This World, acts as a macro glance for the core requisite of my inner healing, which could read: Teach Me How to Love Myself. 

Kei Ito, Riddle of Peace/War, 2022-ongoing. Ash, wooden platform.

Though somber, Ito’s exhibition is not hopeless. On the contrary, his work is full of hope. Nothing difficult disappears by ignoring it; peace is not possible without confronting daunting realities and pushing through them with eyes and heart wide open. Ito’s work does just that. It is bearing the face of questions the world is afraid to ask, and bravely calling for healing in the gray areas. If nothing else, Teach Me How to Love This World has inspired a level of self-reflection and further affirmation of the importance of empathy and love toward myself and in confronting the world around me. Ito’s exhibition implores, “teach me how to love this world.” I suggest that a place to start is learning how to love ourselves.

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Kei Ito’s work is included in Teach Me How to Love This World at The Stamp Gallery of the University of Maryland, College Park, from October 19 – December 10, 2022. 

For more information on Kei ito, visit http://www.kei-ito.com/.

Current Exhibition, Explore

Face Me: Self Portraits of Hosna Shahramipoor

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Distinct Chatter from April 18 to May 20, 2022 at The Stamp Gallery | University of Maryland, College Park | Written by Isabella Chilcoat

You’d be surprised by how many people have asked me who Hosna Shahramipoor’s model is for her photographs in the gallery and are shocked to learn that they are self portraits.

To me, their confusion speaks volumes about how necessary her portraits are.

Hosna Shahramipoor, Video Arts, 2022, digital media 0:30s.

A second year MFA candidate in the University of Maryland Department of Studio Art, Shahramipoor already holds BA and MFA degrees both from University of Art, Tehran, and she has been photographing professionally since the early 2000s. Now her recent collection of self portraits occupies the walls in our Stamp Gallery as she wraps up this year’s MFA portfolio. Following a trend of distortion, marring, and fracturing, each portrait exhibits some degree of manipulation to the face or the throat applied directly to the surface of the image with various materials. Shahramipoor employs herself as the subject of each photograph, challenging viewers to look beyond implicit biases that often accompany first impressions – @ my confused gallery attendees – about race and identity based on her appearance. She, as an Iranian woman, is inevitably a member of an often harmfully miscategorized community of people who do not always appear the way others expect, especially in the U.S. Her physical appearance contradicts the Western stereotype that prescribes dark hair, eyes, warm, tanned skin, and a hijab as the standard for Middle Eastern women.

She, distinctly, is not white, as portrait I Am Not White (2022) aptly asserts through a glossy archival paper printed photograph with pins filling the box letter shapes of this phrase over her distant countenance. Furthermore, the gaze of the subject peers straight through the viewer with a mix  of severity, solemnity, and exasperation that harmonizes with the portrait’s color palate of rosy browns and taupes. Hung at just the right height, Shahramipoor’s gaze pierces at eye level to reiterate “I AM NOT WHITE,” undoubtedly  a worn-out phrase, spoken so often that each utterance, every situation urging that clarification, conversely pierces into the skin like a sharp needle. This piece is not the only portrait intoning a theme of false assumptions, but it is perhaps the most obvious rendering of the concept.

Hosna Shahramipoor, I Am Not White, 2022, glossy archival print on paper.

Video Arts (2022), by Shahramipoor, on view in the second half of the gallery, may easily read as a feeling of fractured identity or wounding. The thirty-second clip features a still portrait of the artist that is progressively obscured by jagged, triangular incisions that resemble pieces of a broken mirror. Starting in a haloing progression around her face, the incisions continue and grow longer as they slice into her seated body covering her entire being until they disappear and the video loops to the beginning. The artist’s act of visceral mutilation through delicate, meticulous execution creates portraits that are nothing short of poetic.

Shahramipoor’s focus on self portraiture and the cool intensity of her stare speak to the viewer beyond archival paper and a projected screen as if saying “face me.” I urge anyone to visit the gallery to witness these portraits in person and to confront their own internalized biases.

Hosna Shahramipoor’s work is included in Distinct Chatter at The Stamp Gallery of the University of Maryland, College Park, from April 18 – May 20, 2022.

For more information on Hosna Shahramipoor, visit the University of Maryland’s Department of Art.

For more information on Distinct Chatter and related events, visit the Stamp Website.

Contemporary Art Purchasing Program (CAPP), Current Exhibition, Explore, Top Picks!

Contemplating “Then I Remembered the Most Radical Thing Black People Can Do – Continue to Love Each Other”

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New Arrivals 2021 from August 30 to October 16, 2021 at the STAMP Gallery | University of Maryland, College Park | written by Isabella Chilcoat

Faith Couch, a young and electrifying contemporary photographer, breaks through walls of race, gender, sexuality, and nationality through her pure, intimate, and unapologetic images. Graduating from Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in 2019, Couch has already exhibited across the globe in the African American Museum in Philadelphia, Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University,  Queen’s University Belfast, Arles Les Rencontres de la Photographie, and International Center of Photography to name a few, and has earned a spot on the Forbes 30 under 30 for Art and Style. She currently works out of Baltimore, MD and continues to gain notoriety throughout the world for her sensitive and provocative photographs.

Remarkably, two of her works, selected by University of Maryland’s CAPP committee for the University’s permanent collection, currently hang in the STAMP Gallery inspiring feelings of reverence, awe, and intrigue. Fitting seamlessly into this year’s CAPP committee’s mission, the members note that both selected works inspire internal and interpersonal discussion into the complexities and dynamisms of the Black experience.

“The intangible aspect of Memory is concretized in a visceral sense via the body but is triggered by an object, image, sound, or gesture”

Couch, Faith. “Then I Remembered the Most Radical Thing Black People Can Do – Continue to Love Each Other.” Faith Couch, 2020, https://www.faithcouch.com/black-love-is-political#1. Accessed 17 September 2021.

One of her pieces adorning the walls in the STAMP Gallery exhibit is Then I Remembered the Most Radical Thing Black People Can Do – Continue to Love Each Other, 2021, Archival Inkjet Print, 24” x 36” that has sparked incredible conversation within the gallery in only its first month on display. The luminous photo print describes a scene of Faith, herself, and her partner nude in a vast grass field as they rest intertwined with loving gazes over each other’s bodies as if to absorb every moment in the presence of the person they love. The composition betrays the immaculate skill of the artist and tantalizes the eye of the viewer with its soft diagonals of limbs and torsos, while employing a fascinating one point perspective from the impressions of cut grass opening toward the couple who reclines in the central foreground and basks in golden sunlight.

Delving more deeply into Couch’s exquisite technique, the image contains shadows on the bottom corners taking the form of a subtle vignette, and, as the viewer draws nearer the picture, they become a part of the vignette that distances them from the scene. Here, the artist establishes privacy and safe distance for her figures so that they remain undisturbed, but, equally, to enforce that the viewers may only experience this moment vicariously by removing room to objectify her subject’s bodies. The serenity and intimacy is preserved forever.

Couch has commented “The intangible aspect of Memory is concretized in a visceral sense via the body but is triggered by an object, image, sound, or gesture.” Then I Remembered the Most Radical Thing Black People Can Do – Continue to Love Each Other captures the history and folklore, indispensable to Black culture and invokes the internal landscape of both dark and joyous memories through the image of Black people expressing tenderness, love, and intimacy. She composed a highly personal image that speaks especially to members of the diaspora to establish connectivity and community in shared happiness and pain. Ultimately, via Then I Remembered the Most Radical Thing Black People Can Do – Continue to Love Each Other, Faith Couch asserts that the greatest statement against injustice and disharmony is love.

P.S. I HIGHLY encourage you to check out all of Faith Couch’s works on display in person for the full viewing experience (socially distant of course) as well as her instagram for exclusive content and even more shots of her work and artistic process

Faith Couch’s work is included in New Arrivals 2021 at The Stamp Gallery of the University of Maryland, College Park, from August 30 – October 16, 2021. Couch will be joining the other artists of New Arrivals 2021 in an artist talk in the Gallery in October 2021.

For more information on Faith Couch, visit https://www.faithcouch.com/#1 

For more information and to view Then I Remembered the Most Radical Thing Black People Can Do – Continue to Love Each Other virtually, visit https://www.faithcouch.com/black-love-is-political#4 

For more information on New Arrivals 2021 and related events, visit https://stamp.umd.edu/centers/stamp_gallery .

Artist Interviews

Interview with ‘capital lives’ Artist Sydney Gray

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This is the fifth installment of the capital lives artist interview series. capital lives features work by Bo Chen, Sydney Gray, Sarah O’Donoghue, Brea Soul, Christine Stoddard, and Nevada Taylor.

Sydney Gray | Photographer | Exhibiting in capital lives from May 30 to July 4, 2018 at The Stamp Gallery | University of Maryland, College Park | Interview by Rina Goldman

Can you tell me a bit about yourself, where are you from, how did you end up in Washington D.C.?

I am originally from the suburbs of Philadelphia. I am a student at the George Washington University which brought me to Washington, D.C.. I started photography my sophomore year of high school but my passion for it really developed after I tore my ACL four times in 3.5 years and realized playing sports was no longer going to be in my future.

As a student at George Washington University, how does your environment affect your photography? Is there a direct correlation between the two?

Being a student at the George Washington University has put me in a different environment then I was used to. In high school I would always complain that there was nothing for me to take pictures of for photo class because the only things in walking distance were grass trees and houses. Now, being in the city there is a wealth of interesting subjects to photograph. The people, the architecture, the streets are all available to me with ease. But my favorite type of photos to take are portraits and consistently being surrounded by other students and friends makes portraits very accessible. It also does wonders for my creative process because things feel so much more attainable being in such an open and inviting environment.

Where do you find inspiration? What about photography inspires you?

In many ways I feel I still have yet to grasp my true inspiration. For now I enjoy exploring what I can do and learn through my camera. I feel I can really capture moments and places with my camera, but I can also capture people. The pictures that were on display for this gallery for instance, I took for my photography class. I love how I was able to pair the blurbs that the subjects wrote with the pictures to truly tell the audience about who they are.

In your work, you showcase the “true beauty” of black women, what effect does being a black woman have on who you choose to photograph?

In general, I am not picky about who I take photos of. I love to capture the essence of people from various races, nationalities and ethnicities. In fact, I hope to take photos of a more diverse group of people in the future. With that being said, as a black female I feel a sense of attachment to other black females. In a way taking pictures of other black females is an extension of myself. My favorite feeling is when my subjects can truly see themselves as a strong and beautiful person no matter how they felt about themselves previously. I know that through my photographs I am changing people’s perception of themself, whether it is for a brief second or the rest of their lives I know in my heart I am making a small positive difference in their lives.

 

Confidence From Behind
Gray, Sydney. Confidence from Behind. 2017. Digital Photography.

Can you elaborate on the process of taking these photos, particularly Confidence from Behind?

Each photograph and scene had its own creative process associated with it. Confidence from Behind is probably one of my favorite photos from the grouping. It is of my roommate and it was actually taken in our dorm room. I knew we were in a safe space so I wanted to take the opportunity to push the boundaries a little. I wanted to display confidence and many times that goes hand in hand with body image so I figured let’s show some skin. On a whim I asked my roommate if she would feel comfortable asking pictures with just a jacket on and no shirt underneath it. To my surprise she said yes almost instantly. Once we finished taking the pictures I was so excited to show her the ones I really liked but she didn’t want to look at any of them. I had to push and repeat how great they looked before she finally gave in and looked at them. In that moment I was definitely struck by how my project could really help people see themselves in a new way.

 

How are these women an example of D.C. today?

When I think of DC I think so people coming from so many different places. The group of women that I took photos of represent various backgrounds. The backgrounds of those represented in the gallery include, Kenyan from Princeton, New Jersey, half Jamaican from Steven City, Virginia, and Nigerian but lived in Ohio, Texas and most recently Virginia. This just proves that the people that live in DC tend to have very diverse backgrounds and many times aren’t originally from DC itself. That is just one thing I love about living in this city, I have met people from and learned so much about various cultures that I never knew about before.

 

Flower Girl
Gray, Sydney. Flower Girl. 2017. Digital Photography

Do the flowers you’ve incorporated into two of the pieces have any specific meaning?

The idea behind the photos with the flowers was to parallel natural hair with nature.

 

 

 

Some of the pieces are accompanied by quotes from the models, how did that come about?

Originally I was not going to do this. My photo professor had suggested it early on in a general setting but I had not thought about it again until a couple of days before the project was due. After looking at all the photos as a whole I realized how strongly they oozed black beauty and Black Girl Magic. At that point I thought back to my professor’s suggestion to have quotes that accompany the photographs and I thought having my friends speak to their experience as a black female would bring the photos to life. The quotes that my friends provided exceeded my expectations. They ranged, some spoke on personal struggles, others took a humorous approach but together I believe they really embodied what it was like to be a black female.

Naturally Lizz.jpg
Gray, Sydney. Naturally Lizz. 2017. Digital Photography.
But the best part of growing up so far has been becoming more confident and growing to love the way my body looks and the skin that I have, and it’s crazy to me now that I used to hate myself so much when I was younger. Struggling with body image and acceptance isn’t uncommon, and like a lot of girls my age in America, I definitely struggled.
~Lizz

 

Lisa.jpg
Gray, Sydney. Lisa. 2017. Digital Photography.

 

Do you have a favorite piece, or one that was most exciting for you to shoot?

My favorite picture was probably confidence from behind and I would love to reshoot photos like that with better lighting and equipment. I also love the simplicity of Lisa. There also a few that were not in the gallery but part of the full project that I loved as well.

What camera did you use for the portrait photography displayed in capital lives?

I use a Nikon D750.

Are there any future projects in the works?

Currently I do not have any big projects in the works. I hope to brainstorm ideas and maybe carry them out during the summer. I have a list of places I want to have fun photoshoots at around the District however. I am also studying abroad next semester so I am looking forward to the beautiful photographs I know I will take overseas.

Finally, the last question we are asking all the contributing artists is, what lies behind the image of power?

Power can be expressed in so many different ways and it isn’t even all through people. If the subject is a person I believe power comes from within that person and it will exude from the photograph. But if the photograph is not of a person then I believe power comes from the audience. Different things make different people feel power. Overall, I do believe the right balance of power in a key to confidence and success.

Gray’s work is included in capital lives at The Stamp Gallery of the University of Maryland, College Park, from May 30 through July 3, 2018.

For more information on Sydney Gray, visit sydneyellephotos.wixsite.com/photos.

For more information on capital lives and related events, visit thestamp.umd.edu/stamp_gallery