The Roaming Days

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Artist statement from final show in Rome:

“I think that our sense of realism has been changes to some extent since surrealism- well, really, since Freud- because we’ve been made more conscious of how realism can drawn on the unconscious….I believe that realism has to be re-invented. It has to be continuously re-invented…I believe that reality in art is something profoundly artificial and that it has to be re-created otherwise it will be just an illustration of something – which will be very second hand.”

-Francis Bacon

This quote by artist Francis Bacon taps directly into the ideas I am exploring in my photography projects. Living in a foreign country and surrounding yourself with a completely unfamiliar context inevitably causes some recreation of your personal reality. You remain caught between the familiar and the unfamiliar, the reality of existing where you are, and the dream of your presence somewhere seeming so unreal. The images taken inside a camera obscura, illustrate this idea by contrasting a normal room, with unnatural depictions of the outside streaming across the walls. The experience of seeing these images in the room they were taken, but warped by the affects of a camera obscura causes a disorientation and hopeful reconsideration of reality, similar to the experience of studying abroad.

seen, unseen

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within, without

In addition to being caught between the realities I am familiar with and the reality of living in Italy, I have also observed Rome as a place caught between opposing forces. Between it’s history as the once most powerful empire in the world, and now how that history is preventing it from modernizing. Between the ever-present Catholicism, muddled with depictions of Greek Gods. Between the gender roles and relationships of the old world contrasted with those of the new. I explored this idea with a series of blurred images of the heavenly virtues and deadly sins, which leave the viewer unsure of which is good and which is evil. The interaction between the two makes their seemingly clear distinction less apparent. The dark doorway begs for one to follow the unknown path- the portal between these distinct poles, and the place to find a new, individual reality. This is an unfamiliar place where, like in Rome, these polar forces collide and find an identity in the space in-between.

virtue and sin

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