Insomnia, memory loss, lethargy, and insanity

A series of digital works printed on fabric combine abstraction and distortion as well as images of glass Fresnel lenses found in internet searches. Together, the resulting images embody mathematical principles from quantum physics and take up photographic conversations about the bending of light and subsequent warping of reality.

Fresnel lenses saved lives at sea but had other, more detrimental effects, reinforcing the colonial expansion of empire from Europe throughout much of the rest of the world and setting in motion the accelerationism and compression of distance through what David Harvey refers to as “time–space compression.” 

These three works in particular were created during 2021 as part of new series investigating superstitions around tropical disease, stemming from the impact and pathology of the Covid-19 epidemic in our lives at this time. However, they only relate to the images and facts around Covid-19 tangentially, instead exploring an idiosyncrasy of European medical history during Great Britain and Germany’s colonial periods. At the time, actinic light rays were understood to cause debilitating disease and were combatted through strange sartorial adaptations and the addition of red woolen and flannel fabrics to various clothes. The same wavelength of light radiation was coincidentally the portion of the spectrum used to expose negatives and prints in early photography. The series explores this connection between exposure and medicine through the lens of light, optics, lightwave interference patterns, and digital imagery.

Within the parking structure as context, the works play on the sense of disorientation and control in those spaces, on how you would drive through them in a set direction while constantly turning and being redirected. The fabric banners might act as roadblocks to cause viewers to pause or as lures to encourage one to navigate differently through the space. 

The project was presented at the Broadway Market in Buffalo, NY as part of Play/Ground 2021, in collaboration with the Buffalo Institute for Contemporary Art (BICA) and Resource:Art.