September 17–October 30, 2022 | Reception: Friday, October 14, 7–10 pm
The Torpedo Factory Art Center presents Body Talk, an all-media group exhibition themed on self-portraiture, figural work, or depictions of the self on view in Target Gallery and Studio 9. The goal of this exhibition is to explore themes of identity, culture, gender, and mental health through the expression of the physical form.
JUROR STATEMENT
Bodies in art often fall into a strange dichotomy - purely aesthetic/technical representations and serving as a metaphor for many things that are not bodies.
The works in this show instead prioritize bodies as bodies in all of their complexity and nuance, including bodies as physical selves, bodies as experiences, bodies as interfaces, and bodies as sites of identity and spirituality.
The participating artists deliver on a key aspect of body-related work. Their works are highly specific to their subjects, providing a refreshing integrity in representation. Simultaneously, they pursue deep understanding of embodied experiences that transcend their subjects and themselves. They engage, dissect, and reimagine various gazes, with vulnerability, precision, and care - and a belief in the power of the body and subject.
These works also navigate the many tenuous bodily boundaries present in 2022 - with the state, the spiritual, with safety, with intimate relationships, with virtual and physical worlds, the strange passage of time over the past several years, manifest and potential, public and private.
More than making a space for the viewer's body, these works make a world.
-Matt Storm
ABOUT THE JUROR
Matt Storm (he/him) is a photo-based artist in Washington, D.C, and a 2020 recipient of the Arts & Humanities Fellowship from Washington D.C.’s Commission on the Arts & Humanities. Storm’s work engages with the theme of identity, and the questions, “who are we, and how do we know?”
Storm serves as Chair of the Pride Caucus for the Society for Photographic Education, and he curated a show of art by D.C.-area artists who identify as transgender, non-binary, Two Spirit, and agender as part of Trans Pride DC in 2019.
Storm has worked at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA, and he graduated from Dartmouth College with the Perspectives on Design Award.
On View in Target Gallery
Michael Hubbard (Midland, TX), Shake It, Oil on plastic, 2020. $650.
“This work is an expression of my own fluid gender identity. I find paint to be an ideal medium to play with the ambiguities and contradictions present in the experience and perception of gender. Paintings are ambiguous by nature, with one foot in reality and another in imagination. This painting aims to express a feeling of freedom from biology and societal norms by presenting interior and exterior experience simultaneously. In all my work I aim to express a lived bodily experience and a celebration of life lived in between.”
-Michael Hubbard
Redeat Wondemu (Washington, D.C), Holding on to you, Platinum palladium print, 2020. $500.
"I still remember the first self-portrait I took. I had moved to Addis wanting to start my Modern Muse photography series and had all these ideas in my head, but I didn’t have anyone who agreed to be photographed yet. So, I decided to take portraits of myself.
From that day on it has evolved to me doing self-portraits every time I need to express feelings that I do not have words for. The way to deal with overwhelming emotions is using it for a creative process. So, I pick up my camera...The vulnerability presented by taking self-portraits and sharing them has taught me representation matters. Putting myself as the muse and making large scale prints and platinum palladium prints is a way to connect with underrepresented people in a meaningful way. What started as a substitute has suddenly become a whole new meaning for me.”
-Redeat Wondemu
Laurie Berenhaus (Tarrytown, NJ), Phenakistoscope_n1_Looped, Stop motion animation, 2 min. 48 sec. 2022. Prints available upon request, Edition of 8.
“I began 3D scanning my body, in response to varied health challenges causing my weight to fluctuate dramatically between 2018-2019. The process of altering images through alternative photographic techniques and intuitive play was both cathartic and frightening. The following entries are a byproduct of deconstructing past selves, exploration and above all, a necessary purge to aid in regaining autonomy of one’s body. Phenakistoscope_n1 Looped is a stop-motion animation that portrays a looping fluctuation of body and form based on the artist's body.”
-Laurie Berenhaus
Aliana Grace Bailey (Washington, DC), Water Gaze, Mixed media on cotton, 2021. $5,000.
“Water Gaze explores the themes of Blackness, womanhood, spirituality, rest as a means of resistance, and resilience. Water Gaze is a self-reflection of the artist's journey throughout the year 2020 and where she has arrived. Water is explored as the source of life, purification, healing, and as a space of meditation. Through repetition, spiritual practices, solitude, and truth-telling—the artist fully arrests herself in her own beauty, process, and healing.”
-Aliana Grace Bailey
Rebecca Spilecki (Wilton, ME), Greeting the Dawn, Polymer Clay, 2020. $320.
"Greeting the Dawn is the first in a series of relief sculptures portraying fat women as people, without either glorification or apology. By making physical forms rife with detailed extremities and body rolls, I hope to reaffirm personhood and value in figures and choices which are consistently societally undervalued, demeaned, or degraded.”
-Rebecca Spilecki
Rebecca Spilecki (Wilton, ME), Luxuriating, Polymer Clay, 2020. $320.
"Luxuriating is the second in a series of relief sculptures portraying fat women as people, without either glorification or apology. By making physical forms rife with detailed extremities and body rolls, I hope to reaffirm personhood and value in figures and choices which are consistently societally undervalued, demeaned, or degraded.”
-Rebecca Spilecki
Mia Zheng (Honolulu, HI), n/a, Photograph, 2021, $11,000
"Be dynamic, be still."
-Mia Zheng
Hannah Boone (Brooklyn, NY), Butterfly, 3d printed PLA, color shift lacquer, acrylic, 2021. $4,000.
“This sculpture was created by 3D scanning my anatomy that has been changed by Hormone Replacement Therapy, then augmenting and distorting the file on the computer. The final product was printed out larger than life as a shimmering, biomorphic butterfly. As someone who is in the process of slowly transforming my body medically, being able to instantly transform my body digitally has been a source of euphoria. Being able to print my new body out has felt like science fiction.”
-Hannah Boone
Jessica Valoris (Washington, DC), Return, 59 sec. 2022. NFS.
“Return is a movement meditation that references the connection between our bodies, the waters, and flight. Honoring the ancestors of Igbo Landing, and their return through the waters, this ritual of return echoes histories of fugitive practice and collective resistance.”
-Jessica Valoris
April Vendetta and Elizabeth Lamb (Camera Operator) (Brooklyn, NY), Float, Digital photograph on metal, 2020. $2,500.
“This photographic image/object can be viewed as documentation, a performance art action, and part of a fragmented archive. This recording also acts to both express and disseminate my lived queer experience to the world.”
-April Vendetta and Elizabeth Lamb
Eliza Clifford (Bethesda, MD), My Body is a House, Serigraph on paper, 2022. $315.
“My Body is a House is a continued exploration of my relationship between gender, body dysmorphia, and issues surrounding comfort/discomfort. The piece and embedded text serve as a narrative metaphor for my current feelings about my body and the complex understandings one grapples with when considering the physicality of life and the tangibility of their body. As this is a very personal piece, I will not disclose the specific symbolism behind the imagery itself, but I wish for the viewer to have their own individual experience with the work just as we all have our own unique experiences and obstacles with understanding our own bodies.”
-Eliza Clifford
Leslie Kiefer (Washington, DC) The Electric Bedroom, Digital Photography, 2022. $300.
“Alone, but an energized woman undeterred by circumstance or age.”
-Leslie Kiefer
Aliana Grace Bailey (Washington, DC), Intimate gestures and pinky promises, Digital collage on velvet, 2022. $4,500.
“Human touch can increase feelings of trust, compassion, and generosity. Human touch can decrease feelings of fear and anxiety. Intimate gestures and pinky promises is a visual and body movement interpretation of lessons learned from a seemingly healthy romantic relationship, being exposed as distortion and traumatic. Exploring the intimate gesture of handholding, transfer of energy, and the way we connect through hands—the collage is documentation of performance. The collage features actual Polaroids from moments in the relationship and is surrounded by authentic loving intimate gestures with me post-relationship. The relationship with myself and understanding of myself is what made the relationship beautiful. The visual collage is reflected through words in the piece, ‘but you didn’t love him.’”
-Aliana Grace Bailey
Ash Hagerstrand (Brooklyn, NY), Call Me Beep Me, GIF, 4 sec. 2021. $1000 edition of 10 custom DVDs.
“Call me beep me explores the anxiety of receiving health notifications on your phone and the moment of bodily merging with an electronic device that holds the answers to your fate.”
-Ash Hagerstrand
Ash Hagerstrand (Brooklyn, NY), Dating Sim 1, GIF, 4 sec. 2022. NFS.
“Dating Sim I considers digital romance simulations with disabled bodies. inspired by Katawa Shoujo, a dating simulation video game featuring disabled women developed by men on 4chan. While the final game was praised for its humanity and kindness as well as its "gentleness" regarding the sexual aspects of the game the developmental and original sketches for the game were dehumanized and fetishistic. the words at the bottom of the screen are taken from a pickup line I received in a bar while holding my cane.”
-Ash Hagerstrand
Ash Hagerstrand (Brooklyn, NY), Self-diagnosis, GIF, 4 sec. 2021. $1000 edition of 10 custom DVDs.
“Self-diagnosis explores the process of becoming both doctor and patient while exploring the body through process of digital medical research.”
-Ash Hagerstrand
Milan Warner (Silver Spring, MD), Still Water, Bottle, water, twine, dye, plasticine, 2020. NFS.
“Natural hair that is straightened with heat reverts back to its original textured form when submerged underwater. This is a depiction of the memory of a wish.”
-Milan Warner
David Voss (Silver Spring, MD), Imaginary Fragments, Photograph, 2020. $400.
“Imaginary Fragments captures the instability of thought during a time of war, domestic unrest, and personal dislocation.”
-David Voss
Sharon Draghi (Tacoma, WA), Time is an Illusion, Archival Pigment Print, 2020. $1,500.
“Through the use of self-portraiture, I explore ideas about isolation, longing, memories and the passage of time. My work also speaks to the erasure that often happens to women when they reach mid age. This image is part of a project I began during the pandemic. I’ve been thinking about the notion of time, and how slow and surreal the days can feel, particularly as darkness comes and winter sets in. This enforced domesticity can be claustrophobic, yet I’ve also found that living within myself can be a consolation, allowing me to delve deep into a universe of my own making. Making photographs is a means of escape for me, a way to slip into another world.”
-Sharon Draghi
Elissa Leibowitz Poma (Silver Spring, MD) Sue Tilley, Lucian Freud’s Muse, Watercolor and ink, 2022. $300.
“Lucian Freud's bold paintings of nude Sue Tilley set records at auction houses, selling for up to $56 million. For more than three decades, this claim to fame has been one of Sue's primary identities. Now in her mid-sixties, Sue still talks of her heyday, and she still poses for artists -- just clothed.”
-Elissa Leibowitz Poma
On View in Studio 9
Jenna Alderiso (Melbourne, FL), My Body Keeps the Score, 7 min. 41 sec. 2021.
“The Body Keeps the Score investigates the metaphorical landscape of an individual's internal and external worlds. The symbolism of the vessel as the human body, and the ocean as an uncontrollable force of nature, ask the performer to protect, adapt, and rebuild.”
-Jenna Alderiso
Dek, Tacoma (WA), New Trucks & Wheels/ Disintegrate, 4 min. 17 sec. 2021.
“As I add new trucks and wheels to my longboard, the video image disintegrates into colors and pixels. The image returns to normal when I go outside and experience the freedom of riding the board.”
-Dek
Paula Stuttman (Washington, D.C), Modern Art, 1 min. 25 sec. 2021. Prints Available Upon Request: $800. Edition of 3 and 1 AP.
“Modern Art was made using images, my voice and text that is based on a museum tour of modern art. It is drawn from my experience as a museum educator. Sometimes we are off site even when the body is physically present. This work is based on assumptions – the tone of voice we expect from experts, the throw away lines we use to convey knowledge and what we expect to see based on what we hear. The work uses images that were made with paint, ink, pencil on paper. The changing images move at a fast pace. They depict figures engaged in sex or other forms of intimacy. The work uses primary colors plus purple, green, brown and black on white paper. Figures are yellow and defined by black lines. They often disintegrate into the paint marks that entangle them.”
-Paula Stuttman
Lauren Woods (Opelika, AL), The Veil, 3 min. 17 sec. 2022.
“This video is a visual meditation on the nature of time and the duality of our corporeal and spiritual existence. Are we only our bodies, or is there something intangible and mysterious to human presence? Do we travel on a linear path, on an endless wheel, or do we exist in an infinite variety of potentials happening eternally all at once? Are we solitary players or interconnected in ways we can't always perceive? These questions have inspired myth, religions, rituals, and concepts of civilization throughout history; how do they invite us to think about our responsibility to each other and the spaces we inhabit?”
-Lauren Woods
Redeat Wondemu (Washington, D.C), Holding on to you, 2 min. 25 sec. 2020.
“Platinum Palladium printing is a traditional printing process. Using a large negative, a contact printing frame, coating paper with the chemicals, and exposing it to UV light I was able to create my prints. The photo prints have a black and white feel to them, but the tones of the print range from warm black to reddish-brown, to wide mid-tone grays. The clarity, tonal range, and archival of a platinum palladium print makes make it a highly valued print. This video illustrates the process of creating the piece ‘Holding on to You’ which is on view in Target Gallery.”
-Redeat Wondemu
About Target Gallery
Target Gallery is the contemporary exhibition space of Torpedo Factory Art Center, managed by the City of Alexandria's Office of the Arts, a division of the Department of Recreation, Parks and Cultural Activities.