How do unwanted objects, sign language, and keys become a language that transcends the frames of an artwork, inviting reflection on personal stories? Schroeder Cherry’s art is not about prescribing a single narrative but about offering an open-ended conversation that resonates with those willing to pause, observe, and engage. His work speaks beyond the African diaspora, inviting all viewers to find meaning within the layers of repurposed materials, folklore, and memory.
Cherry’s mixed-media assemblages on wood embrace storytelling inspired by travel, history, and real and reimagined events. His pieces hold multiple interpretations. Cherry’s use of sign language and alphabet, spelling out specific words that connect to the work’s title, acts as both a riddle and a guide, nudging viewers toward understanding the arts concept without dictating what they should see. The harmony of pictorial and materials makes his art into a language medium that transcends words, across the stories of the African diaspora allowing each individual to bring their own lived experiences and an opportunity to learn from another.
One of the most striking elements in Cherry’s art is using keys. They symbolize access—both the power to lock and to unlock. “Everybody I know has at least one key they’ve had for more than a year and don’t know what it belongs to,” Cherry reflects. A key, seemingly insignificant in isolation, gains new life within his compositions, provoking curiosity and introspection. Keys are one of those overlooked items that are a part of our everyday lives, but we do not realize their importance unless we lose it. It prompts the question: What doors, both literal and metaphorical, have we left locked or forgotten? What memories remain suppressed but, if lost, would trouble us? What stories, memories, and emotions, though left behind in the past, still haunt us?
His mixed media art encourages a slow engagement—something rare in a fast-paced world—and urges viewers to pause, observe, and reflect. Recently, I witnessed a family with young children embodying this philosophy. While looking at the Adam and Eve Enter the Garden 2024 piece, the parents encouraged their children to share what they saw and thought and how they might create something similar. The kids gravitated toward the colors, the recognizable objects like shells and the sparkle of the beads, and the sense of playfulness—all of which sparked curiosity and storytelling. One kid said it reminded them of upcycling, to which the parents suggested working on something similar at home. The parents realized they had lost touch with the arts and crafts activities they used to enjoy in their home garage—a special way they bonded with their children. Found materials in Cherry’s art serve as personal and collective memory touchstones. For one family, the shells and beads recalled childhood arts and crafts, summer beach days, and family traditions. The materials transcend as they may symbolize something deeply personal—an object tied to a specific moment or feeling.
By repurposing commonly found yet unused materials like wood, hardware, locks, and other household objects, Cherry creates sculptural paintings that feel introspective and transcend beyond the frames. There is a sense of familiarity yet mystery—a push and pull between the recognizable and the unknown. His background in puppetry and painting allows him to blur the lines between functional and non-functional forms, placing viewers at a crossroads. What is this material for? What is this story, and whose story is it? Do I have a role to play in it?
Cherry often receives keys from people who visit his exhibitions—an exchange of objects that carry unknown pasts. For those who stop to look closely, the sensory experience of his work can unlock memories, traumas, beliefs, and fears hidden within themselves. His boundless frames extend beyond the canvas, reaching many people who belong to the story, inviting them to add their chapters.
Everyone has a story—a unique, incomplete story—one that is constantly unfolding.
Next time you visit Schroeder Cherry’s exhibition, take a moment. Look closely. Ask questions. What stories will you uncover?
Schroeder Cherry’s work is included in Open Ended Narratives: at The Stamp Gallery of the University of Maryland, College Park, from February 18 to April 5, 2025. For more information on Schroeder Cherry’s work, visit https://bakerartist.org/portfolios/schroedercherry. For more information on Open Ended Narratives: and related events, visit https://stamp.umd.edu/centers/stamp_gallery.
Open Ended Narratives from February 18th to April 5th, 2025, at The Stamp Gallery | University of Maryland, College Park | Written by Rachel Schmid-James
Just as the cogs of a machine must fit together seamlessly to work, an exhibition must build and mesh into something greater than the individual pieces. In Schroeder Cherry’s current show, Open Ended Narratives, the themes emerge like threads, twisting together to create a fluid experience. While certain motifs show up consistently throughout pieces, the Baltimore-based artist is adamant that he has no interest in telling one story. “There is no one story; viewers bring their own experiences to each piece,” Cherry writes in his artist statement.
The idea that an artist has one message they are attempting to convey is simplistic and confining, as art can mean many things to different people. However, this is not to say that these thematic elements have no context outside of the viewer’s own. The image of the watermelon pops up more than seventeen times throughout the works displayed at the gallery. If the viewer has no knowledge of the historical context Cherry is referencing, the significance of the symbol may go unnoticed.
The watermelon stereotype first emerged in the Southern United States in the 1860s, shortly after the end of the Civil War and the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation. Former enslavers and Confederate sympathizers were flailing to combat the beginnings of the Reconstruction era, and observing that many formerly enslaved people were growing watermelons on their farms for profit, created a caricature to represent African Americans as immature and dirty. Over time this farce of a statement worked its way into generations of people, becoming a belief that many learned casually through subliminal messages. It appeared in caricatures on children’s television shows and other representations of minstrelsy. In contemporary history, politicians continue to push this stereotype among others to draw in racist supporters.
Unfortunately, the original meaning of the watermelon has become tainted with these narratives, but the African diaspora has worked to restore its original meaning in the community. Before white supremacists got their hands on the symbol of the watermelon, it stood as a message of liberation and autonomy for formerly enslaved individuals in the South. Cherry’s work reclaims the image, raising it into idolatry, a symbol of resistance, while also planting the seeds for a more positive interpretation of it for current and future Black children.
In Cherry’s piece Twins (Future Voter Series), the watermelon takes the form of the two young girls’ swimsuits. They stand with their arms around each other, beaming at an invisible camera. They are proud of their swimsuits, making no effort to hide and instead exuding excitement over being seen in them. While each viewer is invited to add their own details to these girls’ stories, it cannot be said that they yet understand the burden of the stereotype. They become a symbol of hope for the present, that we may someday completely filter out the muddled narrative created by hate, and return it to its revolutionary roots.
Schroeder Cherry, Future Voters #12, Twins, 2021, mixed media on wood.
The question of divinity is also raised in Cherry’s wall sconce pieces, which depict Black figures as one of the holiest symbols in Christianity: angels. Combining this with the symbol of the watermelon, most notably in the piece Angel Sconce #11, Red Wings, which features the image prominently throughout. Angels are also a symbol with a racist past, often depicting the ideals of whiteness as divine and darker skin as evil. By synthesizing these broader motifs into a piece that seems to reach outward with its curling pieces and a serious face that stares back at you, Cherry continues to weave together strings that connect the ideas of the past and present to those of the future.
Schroeder Cherry, Angel Sconce #11, Red Wings, 2024, mixed media on wood.
Through these works, Cherry takes the history of a harmful stereotype into his hands and melds it into a poetic emblem of joy for the African diaspora. These symbols contribute to the building of a foundation for the narratives that Cherry threads the needle for but never ties off the stitch.
While people are often drawn to noticeably ostentatious and obtrusive works that grab their attention right away, there is an undeniable pull toward the everyday familiar spaces and moments that feel deeply personal and universally relatable. Even from outside the Stamp Gallery, Schroeder Cherry’s exhibition Open Ended Narratives immediately captures the attention with its shimmering keys, locks, and metal elements. While Cherry intended to symbolize them as tools of access, these keys, reminiscent of Hansel and Gretel’s breadcrumb trail, acting as symbolic markers and guiding visitors through Cherry’s thought-provoking works. These objects invite the viewer to piece together a personal narrative, intertwining connections between seemingly disparate elements of the exhibition. Like unlocking hidden layers of meaning, these objects encourage visitors to follow the visual and thematic threads throughout the gallery.
Upon entering the exhibition space, visitors are immersed in an array of distinct themes and series from Cherry’s collection, with the Barber Shop Series standing out as a particularly compelling piece of the narrative puzzle. This series, rich in both visuality and concept, extends beyond the literal barbershop setting, opening conversations on broader social and political themes. Everyday objects, such as playing cards and mirrors, prompt viewers to pause, reflect, and construct their own interpretations. How do communal spaces, like barbershops and hair salons, serve as cultural hubs for storytelling, social bonding, and the exchange of perspectives? And how does Cherry establish such a personal connection with the viewer through his intricate use of found objects?
Cherry’s artistic philosophy resonates deeply with my own approach to design—drawing inspiration from the everyday, the familiar, and the overlooked. The Barber Shop Series especially evokes a sense of nostalgia, curiosity, and warmth. Through this series, Cherry highlights the role of the Black barbershops as more than grooming spaces. They are social sites where Black men are gathered to exchange ideas, discuss social issues and build connections among their community. These spaces serve as the cultural cornerstone that extend beyond the barbershop. Before moving to America in fifth grade, one of my most familiar routines was accompanying my grandmother to her hair salon appointments. There, under the warmth of perm heat machines, neighborhood women gathered to chat and exchange everything from small talk to the biggest gossip in town. Though I often didn’t understand the full scope of their conversations, I instinctively recognized the salon as more than a place for hairstyling. It was a social hub, a space for connection, conversation, and shared experiences, even among strangers. When I first encountered Barber Shop Series #35, Shoot, I felt as if a book in my mind had flipped open to a long-forgotten chapter of my life—young memories that had quietly lingered in the back of my mind. It’s remarkable how art has the power to resurrect moments we never consciously preserved, bringing buried memories back to the surface.
While we may never fully know all of the meanings these objects have for Cherry, what remains clear is his ability to guide viewers toward personal meaning-making. In exploring the Barber Shop Series, I found that my way of “unlocking the locks” was reconnecting with deep, formative memories—realizing just how much emotion and significance are embedded in the everyday. Through nostalgia, curiosity, and artistic deliberation, ordinary spaces become extraordinary, revealing new layers of personal and collective history.
Visit our Stamp Gallery and explore Cherry’s works firsthand. As you move through the exhibition, consider this: What is your key to the locks? What memories, emotions, or connections do these pieces unlock for you? Art has a way of revealing stories we may not have realized we carried—what story will you uncover?
Open Ended Narratives from February 18th to April 5th, 2025, at The Stamp Gallery | University of Maryland, College Park | Written by James Cho
As visitors enter the STAMP Gallery to look at Shroeder Cherry’s work, they are greeted by two pieces, one of which being Cute to Criminal (2023) which is part of Cherry’s Future Voter Series. Like much of Cherry’s work on display for the Open Ended Narratives exhibit, Cute to Criminal presents commentary about the ways in which African Americans are mistreated and profiled by law enforcement.
There are many aspects of Cute to Criminal that could be analysed, from the predominant locks and keys, the playing cards, the watermelon slices, the shards of glass, and so on. When I first saw this piece, though, the first things that stood out were: the portrait of a young black boy; the washboard and the small metal bars at the top of it; the sign language that spells out “Cute”; and the grandfather clock pendulum at the bottom of the piece. Why? Because all of those factors work to present the dualism that Cherry expresses about how African American boys are perceived by law enforcement not as future voters, but as future criminals.
Shroeder Cherry, Future Voter Series, Cute to Criminal, 2023. Mixed media on wood; 47 x 17 inches. Photo Credit: Júlia Sodré
How do these elements work to answer Cherry’s question posed in Cute to Criminal, being: “At what age do I go from cute to criminal?” Cherry’s use of the grandfather clock pendulum represents the ticking of time until black children, especially young boys, are profiled and attacked by police officers as if they were adult men, resulting in them getting shot by bullets akin to the ones lodged in the portrait frame of the young boy. The bars at the top of the washboard work to that same effect, resembling prison cell bars where boys like the one in the portrait might end up behind simply for the colour of their skin and gender. All while they toil away in low-wage jobs that have historically served white people in the United States. Thus, the answer to Cherry’s question is that it doesn’t take long at all for black boys to “go from cute to criminal” in the eyes of the law.
This issue, then, speaks to the second piece from Cherry’s Future Voter Series that drew me in, being Aspects of Future Voters #33 Test (2023). If young black men are considered criminals in the eyes of the law, the law will and has always worked against African American suffrage to prevent “criminals” from having a voice. In Voters #33 Test, Cherry provides two excerpts about voter “literacy tests and other methods [that] were designed for single purpose: to stop Black Americans from voting.” Tests that weren’t rendered unconstitutional until 1965, since they were considered justified due to the historical profiling of African Americans as criminals starting from a young age. This crooked bending of the legal system’s rules, represented by the zig-zagged rulers in Voters #33 Test, was just one of many ways that the government worked to block any and all future African American voters.
Shroeder Cherry, Aspects of Future Voters #33 Test, 2023. Mixed media on wood; 31 x 24 inches. Photo Credit: Júlia Sodré
One other rule that bent the law that Cherry represents in both Cute to Criminal and Voters #33 Test is the “Grandfather clause” that was passed in Southern states after the Civil War. It is one of the “other methods” mentioned in Voters #33 Test and given physical form in Cute to Criminal through its grandfather clock pendulum. Namely, the clause prevented all future African American voters from voting by saying that only “those who had enjoyed the right to vote prior to 1866 or 1867, and their lineal descendants, would be exempt” from literacy tests and other “educational, property or tax requirements for voting”, systematically targeting recently freed slaves who were not exempt (Britannica n.d). The clause and literacy tests worked to stop African Americans from using the key to attaining equality: the freedom to freely think and vote for representatives.
Why does this still matter today? In the wake of recent attacks on DEI initiatives, mass government layoffs, and hostility towards any non-white individuals, we are still living in a world where our rights are infringed upon. The Voting Rights Act that was passed in August of 1965, just barely under sixty years ago, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that acts as the foundation of DEI sixty-one years ago (they aren’t even old enough to count for the full retirement age!), are in jeopardy. What Shroder Cherry purports about discrimination against African Americans and by extension other racial/ethnic/gender-based rights is something that we should be wary of in the coming years because we might face the loss of these pieces of landmark legislation in the near future.
Open Ended Narratives: Mixed Media Assemblages on Wood by Schroeder Cherryfrom February 18 to April 5, 2025 at The Stamp Gallery | University of Maryland, College Park | Written by Olivia DiJulio
To start, could you tell me a bit about yourself and your background?
I grew up in Washington, D.C, and I’ve always been an arts kid. When I was a child, I played with blocks, very colorful wooden blocks. I also played with puppets. I received puppets as presents when I was very young in elementary school. In fact, I still have a puppet, I have a string marionette. I started off with hand puppets and then later I got into marionettes by third grade and fourth grade. I stopped playing with puppets when I was in junior high school because it just wasn’t a cool thing to do for high school kids. In college, I started working with puppets again and I like them. Someone introduced me to a puppet master in Chicago and I ended up apprenticing with him for a while.
When I was in school in D.C. I had the fortune of being exposed to university students from Howard University and they had put together a program called Workshops For Careers in the Arts. Although I was a visual artist, I hung out with the theater kids. I learned a lot from the theater kids, like the importance of rehearsals and preparation, but I knew I wasn’t one of them. I still apply those lessons today as a museum educator and also as an artist.
Do you have any experiences that have influenced your creative process?
I actually finished high school in Switzerland. I was an exchange student, and in my senior year I was taking art classes in Switzerland. I went to the Münchenstein high school, Gymnasium Münchenstein. I was exposed to how the Swiss went about doing their artwork, and that was much more regimented and formulaic, but in America it’s much more wide open. I really enjoy traveling and being lost in different cultures finding my way. There was a period where I would almost annually go to a different country just to immerse myself in another culture. How do you go about making your art when you’re exploring unfamiliar territory? All of that feeds into the art practice. Creativity is all about trying something different, something new, and I try to remind myself of that in the process.
Given the title of the exhibit, “Open Ended Narratives:” what draws you to create nonlinear stories for your work?
I’ll start off by sharing a proverb that I came across. It’s an Islamic phrase and it goes: Allah delights in truth, and varying degrees of truth, but even Allah does not like the entire truth. When I first read that, I had to meditate on it for a while. I realized, wow, this means that there is never one story. You know, Allah likes all truth, but never the absolute truth. There’s never one absolute truth.
With my works, although I might have a narrative in mind, what I appreciate is the visitor being able to look at the work and come up with their own narrative. Sometimes I try to eavesdrop in a gallery to hear what people are saying before I identify myself as the artist. When I come to actually hear what they’re saying, I get that unfiltered response. I would say one of the things I would like people to do is to take time with the work and to look at it. I don’t really expect people to love everything. That’s not my interest. What I really am more interested in is having them just be engaged with the work and come away with something.
That actually leads into our next point. I often hear this question of “can we separate the art from the artist?” What is your stance on art being inherently political, or art for the sake of art?
Now, I have to say, I had an experience recently in a gallery. It was about political movements and how people resist certain movements. There was this one person and she came to my work, looked at it for like a split second, saw some writing and said, “oh, propaganda.”Now, the piece itself was called Huddle, and it’s actually in the gallery right now. It’s of three teenage boys, they’re standing together and they’re on their phones and they’re communicating with each other. The text says “How Republican States Are Expanding Their Power Over Elections” so it would actually be talking about the political movement and what Republicans were doing. It wasn’t propaganda, it was news.
Schroeder Cherry, Future Voters #20, Huddle, 2022. Mixed Media on wood, 36 x 28.5 in.
The viewer brings their own baggage to the work. You can’t disengage from your own experiences when you’re looking at the work. Whatever their experiences are, they’re going to bring that to the piece. It’s always inherently political, because when an artist decides what they’re going to do, that’s an intention. It may or may not be political, but what they’re going through mentally can easily be either political or not.
The next question I want to address is, as a mixed-media artist, how do you decide on a medium? Is there a particular reason why you’re drawn to them?
The mixed media for me is something that evolved. I was trained as a painter so I painted on canvas, I drew on paper. But I got to a point where I was abusing the canvas. I realized I needed something that had a stronger foundation because then I was attaching objects. So I went to wood, but I didn’t go to wood as a sculptor. I went to wood as a painter who just wanted to work on a flat surface. As I jumped over to these flat panels, I moved into carving and using power tools to shape the edges. I didn’t want to create pieces with straight edges on all sides. That led me wanting to experiment with the texture inside the composition. I got more power tools, I got some burners, and then later I got jigsaws and other saws that allowed me to gouge into the piece.
How do you go about including the motifs and imagery we see in your work?
There are some things that repeatedly appear in my works and they include, keys, watermelons, playing cards and there may even be glass shards. The keys for me represent tools of access. Everybody I know has got at least one key that they’ve had for more than a year and don’t know what it belongs to. But they don’t want to give this key up. You can either close something up or you can open it up if you have the key, and the same thing goes with locks.
Watermelons for me, I’m reclaiming a negative, racist image as a positive one. First of all, I’m a vegetarian. I like watermelon. When I first moved to Baltimore in spring, it was the rainy season and there was a bumper crop of watermelons. I started eating melons every day, even for breakfast with a croissant. This is a very nutritious fruit and it has been maligned. I learned that historically, watermelons originated in continental Africa. You’ve got these different melons of different colors. In Maryland you have what you call sugar babies, and those melons are yellow on the inside. There’s a great variety of melons and even the seeds are beautiful. Doing a deep dive into the visual of the watermelon, I thought this is something really to work with and we need to pay attention to it.
I want to highlight again your puppeteering experience. That seems really important to you. What is it like as a role of a puppeteer when communicating information through that medium?
First and foremost, it’s a performance for the audience. No matter what shape the puppet is it could be anything. It could be a book. It could be a stone, but the purpose is its movement in the narrative. I’m doing two things when I’m working with puppetry. I am a visual artist because I’m sewing and constructing them, and I’m a performer because I’m manipulating them in a show. All puppeteers are hybrid artists. When you get a group of puppeteers together, they’ll start talking about their materials and their performances. That’s what they do, it’s about how you make it and how you perform it.
Do you have any stories of performing for older audiences? I feel like puppeteering usually gets associated with children.
Yeah, there’s a puppet. Her name is Ms. Lily, and she’s actually a puppet docent. I designed her when I was working at the Baltimore Museum of Art years ago and I wanted to create a safe place for adults to play. She’s got this white knit sweater, a red skirt, and black patent leather shoes. She became very, very popular because the adults knew that they could come play. She starts in the beginning and says “This is an adult tour. It’s not for children, if you have a child, please take them to the next room. There’s a workshop there, which is lovely for children, but this is not a tour for children.” That’s how she started the tour and then she would introduce me as her technician. I’m dressed in all black, so I’m fully visible. But she introduces me as her technician and she lets the audience know that if there are any questions, they are to be directed to her and not to the technician because the technician will not be speaking.
Ms. Lily, Puppet Art Docent, at Wits End Puppet Slam, Takoma Park, MD
Occasionally in Baltimore, we have what we call puppet slams. It’s when a group of puppeteers come together, usually anywhere from six to ten puppeteers or companies will come together and we’ll each have about five to eight minutes on stage. Sometimes those performances are more for adults than they are for children.
I think that is an amazing form of visual and performance art. Thank you for sharing your puppeteering and your mixed media processes. To wrap up our conservation, 10 years from now, where do you think you see yourself in your art?
I would say I hope to still be creating because I’m going to be one of those people who’s still creating when I’m 95, so I want to continue to do that. I would hope that I’m in a place where people are aware of my work and are enjoying it.
Thank you to Dr. Schroder Cherry for this interview, from the Stamp Gallery.
Schroeder Cherry’s work is included in Open Ended Narratives: at The Stamp Gallery of the University of Maryland, College Park, from February 18 to April 5, 2025. For more information on Schroeder Cherry’s work, visit https://bakerartist.org/portfolios/schroedercherry. For more information on Open Ended Narratives: and related events, visit https://stamp.umd.edu/centers/stamp_gallery.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
A Contemporary Art Dedicated Space at the University of Maryland
