Framing the solo exhibition Prophetic Memory, this video remediates images of the NYC nonprofit art gallery, Artists Space, with the filmmaker’s grandmother's descriptions of how she would use her interior design skills to design their exhibition. Because she couldn’t travel there because of disability and the risks posed by the Covid-19 pandemic (even as this show occurred during the first wave of NYC art spaces “returning to normal"), she relies on the images she’s watching and describing to visualize her ideas.
The video considers access in relation to questions of class, design, and taste. The video was on view in both the gallery and remains on view on the exhibition’s website. The exhibition considers the liveness of an artwork, not just across virtual and physical space but also time, asking when is the show if it remains on view after it’s “over” and started before an invitation was proffered?
The film is open captioned and audio described in English. Still image description: A passage in an art gallery in-between exhibitions shows a white wall with a slab of sheetrock leaning against it, lit by a single light, with industrial-looking columns running down the center of the passage and along the opposite edge from the wall. At the bottom the image is a caption over a black bar that reads: “on the on that on that wood or whatever that is, that metal.”
Narrated by Annette Carter
Featuring Annette Carter, Deborah Lord, and Jordan Lord
Directed and edited by Jordan Lord
Special Thanks to Shoumik Bhattacharya and Sandra Wazaz