2025 SPE Annual Conference: Adaptation
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Dialogic: MATERIALITY
Elizabeth Claffey, Maria Dumlao, Christine Elfman, Meggan Gould, Garrett Hansen
Saturday, March 03 - 9:00AM to 10:45AM
Grand Ballroom Salon H
The object-ness and materiality of making is central to the 4 artists presenting in this session; their processes, materials, and methods of making cannot be separated from their concepts and yet each artist takes unique path with this material/concept exploration. Each presenter will speak for 15 minutes, and the session will be moderated by Julianna Foster, UArts Faculty.
Networking, and small group discussions among the attendees and presenters will take place at the conclusion of the series of presentations.
Matrilinear: An Exploration of Folklore, Ritual, and Mnemonic Objects, Elizabeth Claffey
Matrilinear, is an ongoing series that addresses embodied memory and its relationship to personal, familial, and cultural identity. These images examine family folklore, ritual, and mnemonic objects passed down through generations of women. The photographs of each object reveal the physical remnants of a body long gone; including stains, tears, and loose thread from clothing that was kept close to the body for comfort and protection. The stitching and/or photographic representations are both a visualization and an expansion of stories shared as family lore. These interruptions also represent the deep influence of one's familial past on personal identity and perceptions of the body.
History in RGB: Individual and Collective History Viewed Through Multiple Lenses, Maria Dumlao
A series of prints representing images of history, popular culture, and mythic folklore, History in RGB, proposes alternatives to the systemic representations ordered by colonial narratives. Stripped of color, the images are re-assigned a new color value of based on a "tropical" Pantone palette. Viewing the prints through a red, green or blue filter, select images become visible while simultaneously obscuring other elements. While the filters become tools for revelation and clarity for a monochromatic narrative, they also produce a mottled background by obfuscating the other narratives that exist on the same surface.
Picturing Impermanence, Christine Elfman
Picturing Impermanence, presents my ongoing exploration of photographic fugitivity. By making images out of their own disappearance using the anthotype process, Elfman acknowledge the inseparability of permanence and ephemerality within pictorial representation. Her work offers a reminder that the harder one tries to capture an object, the more it evades the grasp. This presentation will consider photography as an impossible attempt to capture and control through my recent projects.
A Failure to See, Meggan Gould
The material culture (and language) of photographic education began to seep directly into Gould's studio practice a few years ago, and she finds that she can no longer untangle the two. The primary body of work that Gould will share is a long-term investigation of photographic vision, skewed towards failures, accidents, and mistakes, both deliberate and accidental. Gould looks to examine the control that technology exerts upon us, the assumptions we make as we engage with technologies of vision. It is simultaneously a love letter to the most prosaic aspects of the medium and an obsessive, joyful critique of rules.
HAIL, Garrett Hansen
Roughly 40% of US households have a gun and there are enough guns - approximately 300 million - to arm nearly every man, woman, and child in the country. Currently comprised of four distinct series, HAIL examines what guns create. Whether looking at individual bullets or cataloging the toll that gun violence takes on American communities, this work directly engages both the seductive and destructive power of guns. Utilizing various forms of media, ranging from silver gelatin prints to laser cut Plexiglas, each element of the series challenges viewers to consider the place of guns in American culture.
speakers
Christine Elfman
Elizabeth Claffey
Garrett Hansen
Maria Dumlao
Meggan Gould
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