BFA Project 2021 "Images that Take, Images that Give;" An Exploration of Image Agency by Teresa Donck

    The past year of attending work and school from home has changed how we see. The CBC, BBC, and the Washington Post reported cosmetic procedures increased substantially during the COVID-19 pandemic, largely due to how people see themselves on video calls. When botox and fillers dissolve, leaving faces droopier than ever, will these images be to blame? Images that Take, Images that Give explores how images express agency, and what they are responsible for. Displayed from March 18th-27th at the Audain Gallery, Images that Take, Images that Give was structured around a glossary created by the SFU third-year visual arts undergraduate students, along with professor Sabine Bitter and artist-in-residence Heba Y. Amin. The glossary animates images by pairing verbs such as “captivating”, “hosting”, and “seeing” with the word “image” to create The Captivating Image, The Hosting Image, and The Seeing Image along with 21 other agencies defined in the exhibition catalogue and website. The glossary terms were inscribed in black letters on the white walls of the Audain at a variety of heights and latitudes, almost at random. The show has a feeling of self-determination, as not only are titles omitted from the walls but there is not clear pattern of movement through the space. I felt the works gently prodding for my attention in various ways. 

Debbie C., Left on Read (ghosts), 2021. Photo: Teresa Donck.

    Near the entrance to the gallery, Left on Read (ghosts) by Debbie C. attracts me like a letter from an old friend with the phrase, “Dear Reader, hope these letters find you well.” Accompanied by C.'s term for image agency, The Unraveling Image, (ghosts) suggests that images become detached and unconfined, blur their frames and leap across distances. The poem is written in cursive on a large scroll-like page hanging near the gallery entrance. One line reads,  “think of these letters forming strings that you can pull off the page”  adding texture to the flat surface. The phrase “examine the rough raw edges that frame this space” proposes that the gallery space in which the exhibit is contained is not a hard border, but changeable and blurry. The piece reveals that even images that seem innocuous, such as a casually worded letter, can dissolve or reorder their purpose as they choose. 

Lil Waldegger, ETA: PI (permanently injured), 2021. Photo: Teresa Donck.

    Lil Waldegger’s work, ETA: PI (permanently injured) beckons conspiratorially from near the centre of the gallery. The piece consists of a dark blue curtain suspended in the gallery space, and cut out of it is the question “How Do We Misbehave In The Dark?” ETA both hides and exposes. One could conceivably use the curtain to hide, but it is rendered useless for this purpose by the holes the words make. Simultaneously, the question “how do we misbehave in the dark” catches the viewer in the act by assuming that they behave mischievously while no one is watching. Similarly, images that have been altered can both hide and expose depending on the intentions of the one altering it. 

Ritz Li, Dear Diary, 2021. Photo: Teresa Donck.

    Ritz Li’s Dear Diary, a collage of Li’s purchasing records over several months, torments me with an embarrassment the lingers after I move on to other works. The receipts are crumpled and re-smoothed, arrangned orderly with edges touching but never overlapping. These slips are not ones you find blowing around on the pavement, they are displayed to invite reading. Dear Diary breaks down the illusion of confidentiality, as the reality is our purchasing records are  observed and documented daily. Li uses physical receipts, but reminds me that it is usually our digital purchasing records that are blowing in the wind for data collectors to pick up. Codes and algorithms that can’t feel the embarrassment of intruding on someones privacy as I do looking at Dear Diary.     

Ravneet Kaur Sidhu, The Reasons We Do It, 2021. Photo: Teresa Donck.

    Ravneet Kaur Sdhu’s The Reason’s We Do It shows how the dominant image only reveals  itself when compared to the images it has overshadowed. I am first drawn to the tranquil scene the sculpture emulates. Consisting of a long narrow rug beside three metal meal trays each with a serving of red lentils and matching cup, The Reason’s We Do It contrasts the view of the busy street outside the gallery window with an atmosphere of quiet nourishment. On the floor next to the installation is a QR code that opens an audio recording from the Kisaan (Farmer’s) Protest opposing the Indian agriculture acts of 2020. The dominant image of Indian culture represented by the meal setting is foiled by the immersion of the scene in the Farmer’s Protest. As with the tranquil setting of the sculpture, the dominant image is often convincing. However, as Sidhu explains in the definition of The Dominant Image, its agency to dominate is truncated when its dominant nature is exposed. I no longer feel the safety and simplicity of a meal of lentils that The Reason’s promises after hearing the protests necessary to fight for farmer’s livelihoods. 

Heba Y. Amin asks “Can art, in fact, mobilize change? And should we be expecting this from art in the first place?” In the case of the rise in plastic surgery, it is clear that seeing themselves on zoom for hours a day mobilized some to change their appearance. Images that Take, Images that Give offers no answer, but shows the many ways that images enact their agency upon their viewer. We cannot control how an image affects us, nor can an image control how we react to their effects. As I leave the gallery and the transience of Debbie C.’s Left on Read (ghosts), the intrusion of Li’s Dear Diary, the mischievousness of Waldegger’s ETA, and the urgency of  Ravneet Kaur Sdhu’s The Reason’s stays with me, I wonder if the border of the gallery is made permeable by the way these images continue to enact their agencies on me after I leave. 

For the complete glossary of agencies, and to see more of the exhibition, visit

www.sfu.ca/~sbitter/image_glossary/index.html

Images that Take, Images that Give, March 18-27th, 2021, Audain Gallery.

Heba Y. Amin, Sabine Bitter (with Helmut Weber), Debbie Chan, Sena Cleave, DAAR (Decolonizing Architecture Art Research, Sandi Hilal and Alessandro Petti), Aakansha Ghosh, Sofia Grace, Shinaaz K. Johal, Ritz Li, Daniel Lin, Quinn Lumsden, Sahar Rahmanian, Oliver Ressler, Ravneet Kaur Sidhu, Paige Smith, Xiaotong Sun (Shiny), Lil Waldegger, and Yunze Xie (David). 

References

Braff, Danielle. “Plastic Surgeons Say Business Is up, Partly Because Clients Don’t like How They Look on Zoom.” The Washington Post, 2020. https://www.washingtonpost.com/road-to-recovery/plastic-surgery-cosmetic-covid-zoom/2020/12/07/6283e6d2-35a2-11eb-b59c-adb7153d10c2_story.html.

Cleave, Sena, Sofia Grace, Paige Smith, Lil Waldegger, Sabine Bitter, and Akansha Ghosh, eds. Images That Take, Images That Give. Vancouver, BC: SFU, 2021.

Heydari, Anis. “Cosmetic Procedures: the Literally Eyebrow-Raising Trend Hiding behind Face Masks.” CBC, 2020. https://www.cbc.ca/radio/costofliving/the-economics-of-childcare-plus-the-surge-in-cosmetic-procedures-hidden-by-face-masks-1.5652124/cosmetic-procedures-the-literally-eyebrow-raising-trend-hiding-behind-face-masks-1.5652142.

Meeson, Sally. “Why Plastic-Surgery Demand Is Booming amid Lockdown.” BBC, 2020. https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20200909-why-plastic-surgery-demand-is-booming-amid-lockdown.