When the disruptions and distortions of nature and man force us not only to look into but step through the glass we find ourselves on display.
The pathway leading to this installation began in Fall 2014 as a 100 page mixed-media visual diary through which I examined my personal response to the recent diagnosis of a seizure disorder. Using imagery and elements from my scholarly research on seizures and art ranging from the artworks of Marcel Duchamp, the writings of Lewis Carroll, Viktor Shklovsky, V.S. Ramachandran and numerous neuroscientists/researchers as well as those, particularly females, living with seizure disorders throughout history, I responded to the information I gathered in the way that I know best -through painting and drawing. Spurred by this practice-led research I began to explore ways in which the identity of the object -the painting or drawing- might be perceived differently by the viewer in contexts outside of a traditional wall display.
This visual diary has grown to encompass a variety of offshoot artworks and projects over the past three years. Among which an installation, titled Wanderland, of the pages in a dark, narrow hallway much like the rabbit hole Alice falls through when chasing the white rabbit into Wonderland; the origins of Carroll’s story has often been described being from the author’s experience with seizures in the temporal lobe. Another sprout, based again in the adventures of Alice and titled Look-In Glass, involved the seedling ‘Pages’ a video slide show of the diary projected inside a mirrored box whose exterior face was constructed of a two-way mirror, a looking glass to ‘look in’. The experience of looking into the mirror and seeing one’s reflection on the surface while simultaneously the same reflection appears as a floating face inside the box was akin to stepping through the looking glass, just like Alice; an experience analogous to the impending seizure and confusing after-effects followed by a diagnosis challenging an established understanding of the self now contained in the box.
Unable to completely recreate these branches for this exhibition I chose instead to cultivate another appendage titled On Display. However, my original idea for this recreation became disrupted and distorted, forcing me to step through the glass once more. Instead of an installation containing the 100 pages at its core I have focused on re-creating the experience of the two-way mirror as a window display. Here passers-by become again part of the work through a morphing of their reflection on both sides of the window glass, experiencing a change in identity equivalent to my own health related experience as well as recalling the change of identity of the Shepard Building also perpetuated by ‘disruptions and distortions of nature and man’. Through creativity and innovation the space inside the window has developed a new identity as a place where the objects now sourced are knowledge rather than physical commodities.