September 12, 2013, 7 p.m.
Art Gallery of Ontario / Baillie Court
The AGO hosted a ticketed event September 12, 2013 with three of the four artists shortlisted for the 2013 Aimia | AGO Photography Prize since Edgardo Aragón of Mexico unfortunately couldn’t attend.
Panel One: The Image is an Instrument / 7 p.m.
Moderated by lead juror Elizabeth Smith, Executive Director of the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, and Jennifer Blessing, Senior Curator, Photography at the Guggenheim Museum, featuring the shortlisted artists Edgardo Aragon and LaToya Ruby Frazier. Elizabeth Smith talked about Edgardo Aragón‘s work. She said that what she finds interesting is his thought of the change in the landscape in Mexico and of the lives of the people there. Ritualized activities took place surrounding the “War on Drugs” started in 2007 and what he documented with digital photography. Power struggles, violence and turbulence took place. His series “Family Effects” shows the changing experience across generations. He keeps his family history alive by thoughtfully recording it. His work is influenced by the golden era of Mexican film which showed a once majestic landscape. Video scenes with planes like the ones used to traffic drugs landing on rural runways were recreated. The video installation, Tinieblas (photo of installation with viewers) shows separate band members playing a funeral march with their instruments, each in a separate video panel. The sound is mournful, reflecting the passage of time. Personal and political themes combine.
Edgardo Aragón, Tinieblas, 2009, 13 channel video, 7:50 min, courtesy of the artist and Proyectos Monclova.
Visitors with Edgardo Aragón’s work from his video installation, Tinieblas
LaToya Ruby Frazier said that she wants to document the social activism surrounding the collapse of the steel town where she grew up, the illness that the environment caused and the closing and demolition of the local hospital. Again the personal and the political themes combined in her photos of her family and the town – sometimes with herself inserted as a witness to history. She is interested in making invisible realities visible, clarifying the false media coverage of the events in her town.
Artist LaToya Ruby Frazier at the panel conversation
LaToya Ruby Frazier, Grandma Ruby, Mom and Me, from the series Notion of Family, 2002 on, gelatin silver print, 50.8 cm x 60.96 cm
Visitors with LaToya Ruby Frazier’s work
Panel Two: The Image is a Fragment / 8 p.m.
Moderated by Sophie Hackett, Associate Curator, Photography at the AGO and Helga Pakasaar, Curator at Presentation House Gallery, Vancouver, featuring shortlisted artists Chino Otsuka and Erin Shirreff.
Chino Otsuka‘s work is series of mostly small photographs depicting scenes from her childhood into which she has Photoshopped pictures of herself as an adult in those same locations. The image manipulation is well done – and when you know the story behind pictures and that her adult image is beside her childhood self – you get an eerie feeling looking at them.
Artist Chino Otsuka at the Panel discussion
Chino Otsuka, Tokyo 4-3-4-506, 1999, C-type, 101.6 cm x 152.4 cm diptych
Visitors viewing Chino Otsuka’s work
Erin Shirreff considers her photography and video work (Moon) as sculptural and is interested in the themes of stillness, flatness, distance and the divide between you and object. She also emphasized that when you look at such work you are drawn in as in a dream then pushed out again like when waking up.
Artist Erin Shirreff at the panel conversation
Erin Shirreff, Moon, videostill, 2010, color video, silent, 32 minute loop
The curators seemed most interested in the historical time based aspect and story telling qualities in all the artist’s work. No mention was made of the quality of the work or it’s aesthetic qualities as art. The work is very journalistic and seemed to be treated as such, rather than as fine art. It was the story that was behind the pictures that was talked about the most.
Text and photo: Margaret Irving