was this the face
In spring, 2020, Center for Latter-day Saint Arts issued a call for proposals entitled Art for Uncertain Times. Artists, creators and scholars from all over the world responded to the call, and fifty proposals were selected. Our organizational philosophy was this: Who better to navigate the global health pandemic of COVID-19 alongside the long-embattled pandemic of racism than our artists? The Center’s overriding belief that creators can be our most important sages during a moment of global distress underscores Georges Braque's inclination that “art is a wound turned to light.”
Husband-and-wife team and sometimes artistic collaborators, Jamie and Emily Erekson, were selected as grant recipients for Art for Uncertain Times. In April, 2020, Jamie (composer, interdisciplinary artist, and creative producer) and Emily (interdisciplinary artist, composer, and performer) proposed their initial collaboration. But over the past two years, their project grew in scale and ambition, adding the Utah Division of Arts and Museums and The Salt Lake City Arts Council as funders; and evolved to respond to the undercurrent of rising social tensions. Initially a reflection on individual isolation, was this the face has unfolded into a dialogic exploration of the self defined by the other, and the other defined by the self.
was this the face is also a discourse on hybridity: it is both an online and interactive experience as well as a curated presentation. It is both audio and visual; voluntary and planned; static and dynamic; representational and figurative. Willing participants, photographed as part of a growing archive, provide portrait material for six cross-sections of the facial visage. Each photograph is uploaded, sectioned, and composited into an evolving image, which changes every few seconds on a constant loop and projected onto the south wall of the Salt Lake City Public Library. The Ereksons’ capable fusion of genres amplifies tensions related to intersectionality; and the facial portrait is something and nothing all at once. At one point the facial strips render and project on the screen, challenging the nature of the image over and over again, while sounds of the accordion frantically crescendo and rarely resolve. The result? The viewer anxiously anticipates what never comes: permanence.
Underneath the evolving portrait is a static design that references a traditional mugshot. Instead of incarceration or booking information, however, is a listing of current date next to textual abbreviation: “RCVD.” The implicit question here is about reception. How does the viewer receive the work? How does the individual receive the other? And, perhaps more importantly, how do our most significant public or community institutions–referenced by the mugshot–shape, frame, or receive us? The role of the public institution on the self is a question the Ereksons ask not only through form but also through function, with the premiere of was this the face displayed at the Salt Lake City Public Library in October.—Emily Larsen Doxford (Add your portrait to was this the face and see the installation at the Salt Lake City Public Library, or visit it online here.)
