Setting foot into the SP/N Gallery on a sunny Tuesday, I came into a quiet atmosphere, deserted save for the gallery manager, Brian Scott, minding his own work. But instead of feeling foreboding, the calm immersed me in the atmosphere and vibe the gallery had to offer.
As I made my way to the “Snapshot” exhibition within the gallery, I noticed how the white walls and small frames made the space itself feel larger, almost as if I was falling into a cloud and the reality around me didn’t exactly dissipate, but certainly piped down. All I had left was the art and all the questions it raised in me.
As I walked around and basked in the exhibition, I was surprised by how much I connected with the art. A particular standout was a book by Fatemeh Baigmoradi, which showed family photos from before the Iranian Revolution. However, the head of one person was cut out from each photo — that of her father. Baigmoradi grew up in the aftermath of the revolution and her father was part of the National Front, a constitutionalist group opposing the Shah whose members were ordered to be executed after the Revolutionary Council took control. As such, Baigmoradi’s father had to destroy any photos or documents that showed he was a member of the National Front. These experiences helped cement the themes of fear, violence and censorship which define her works.
As I walked to a corner, I saw two video displays — the only two in “Snapshot” — and immediately recognized the names: Laura Kim and Brenda Vega Mora, two of my co-stars on “Blink,” a stage play I did during my first spring semester at UTD. Vega’s specialty has always been photography; however, she started venturing more towards body and video art. In contrast, Kim’s specialty was video art before she began venturing into the world of stage performance.
Vega’s work, titled “The Eternally Obvious 2023,” consisted of a video showing her hands moving very slowly. It seemed very simple at first glance, but to Vega, these hands held far more symbolic value.
“You don’t think about your hands,” Vega said. “An idea I like is the exposure of technology and how we are always embedded with our devices. You just use your hands because they’re utilitarian tools to write, to drive, to whatever. With this work, I was thinking about the hands, the hands we use constantly.”
All art comes with its own perspectives and mine begs to differ. Growing up, I thought about my hands every day, how easily they hurt and how little they could grip. It was an indignant part of being an autistic elementary schooler when it was too painful to play on the monkey bars or do push-ups. I cursed them every day, and yet to Vega’s point, I don’t know what I’d do without them, which bizarrely connected me more with the piece.
Vega’s work was meant to be a complement to “The Eternally Obvious” by Rene Magritte, which depicts a painting of a nude woman sectioned into different canvases. Magritte was a massive inspiration for Vega’s art and an artist whom his contemporaries didn’t quite know where to place or how to analyze.
“Not as famous as Dali, but for me, the best one,” Vega said. “He was a genius in many ways, but one way was language or the multiple representations. He was always playing with the idea of someone watching you paint or watching you be watched. [‘The Eternally Obvious’] didn’t have any arms so my interpretation was to give these sorts of hands.”
While some might think of Vega’s piece as competing with Magritte’s, Vega said she had a different goal altogether.
“I interpreted it. I love the idea of completing something, but I think the work is completed by the artist, so I don’t think he wanted to put hands on the model,” Vega said. “I don’t know why; I think it makes the woman passive, or maybe it’s also like the Greek sculptures. It makes you wonder why the body is incomplete.”
Right next to “The Eternally Obvious 2023” was Kim’s video montage. From the start, I was immediately reminded of “Blink,” Kim’s stage play, with both being surrealist, editing-heavy and anchored in the topic of social media. Right then, as I set the headphones to my ears and my eyes to the screen, one word came to mind: connection.
“One way or the other, there’s definitely thematic inquiries on social media,” Kim said. “Not necessarily just social media, but also how the broader technosphere changes our relationships with each other. It brings us close, but we also lose a sense of tactility and humanity by engaging with each other on the screen.”
It wasn’t just these two works that explored the influence of social media on our daily lives; Kim’s oeuvre, as seen through both “Blink” and her “Snapshot” montage, touch on these themes consistently. However, despite the surface-level similarities, the making of “Blink” and the “Snapshot” montage differed significantly.
“The thought process is not that different, but the mechanics and what goes into it is very different,” Kim said. “There’s a sense of collaboration throughout all the people involved on the stage. Whereas for the video form, it’s more of an individual endeavor. I’m in my studio editing and what you see is, in many ways, more immediate collaboration with myself.”
As I made way to the exit, I found myself thinking about the series of photos of famous avant-garde poets in the exhibition, displayed alongside their poetry. Serving as a reminder of the American exhibit at Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the poetry brought back many fond memories for me. All the pieces in “Snapshot” not only resonated with me, but presented a clear and well-defined vision integral to the wonderful experience of true art.
