Installation

Autobiography for No One

May 10 – August 1, 2014
SFU Gallery, Burnaby, BC

Autobiography for No One presents a proliferation of all-white materials (found, made, repurposed) as a still life within the platform of the gallery. Operating akin to a studio space, the gallery contains an in-development installation to reveal the process of the still life before it is captured or fixed. One component specifically references Eugene Delacroix's painting A Corner of the Studio (the stove), c.1830. The monochromatic colour scheme raises questions of visibility for the individual objects, presenting a blankness onto which viewers may project their own narratives.

The installation is arranged so as to reference the camera lens' frame, while the homogeneous colour scheme raises questions of visibility. The white monochrome can be seen to indicate an absence, which is reinforced by "no one" within the work's title (is "no one" the artist? the viewer?). The installation presents a challenging blankness onto which viewers may project their own narratives, emphasizing the false neutrality of the white cube of the gallery and alluding to the encouraged projection in product advertising. The values at play in global capital and the production and exchange of circulating goods are brought into dialogue with the critical values and material/conceptual strategies of contemporary art. The artist understands her material process as operating between sculpture and photography; the objects presented in Autobiography for No One shift between props and sculptures predicated on a projected assumption of the photographic capture.