veil drawings
When visiting the Kuntskamera (Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography) in St. Petersburg, Russia, I was drawn to the ethnographic examples on display. The glass that separated me from the modeled figures emphasized their otherness, making them near trope-like representative examples of cultures placed under scrutiny (or observation). I took photographic portraits of them to help remind me of the dangers of this categorizing impulse.
I am intrigued by the way the images seem suspended between portraits of real life personalities and pictures of mute wax figures. They remain mysterious, obscure. By drawing vertical silver and black lines over these ethnographic portraits a filtering veil is created that enunciates a permanent, seemingly impregnable, barrier between the subject and the viewer. This veiling displays how we approach perceived differences, with all that suspicion entails.
Each drawing-over-photgraph is unique.
