The Wallach Art Gallery at Columbia University’s show “Lotty Rosenfeld: Disobedient Spaces” is a retrospective of the Chilean activist-artist’s work. Archival documents are presented with photography, drawings, and video installations highlighting Rosenfeld’s feminist interventions and her championing of the “No +” movement. The video projections included are the most compelling use of gallery space in varying sizes across the rooms.
One piece displaying ants crawling up and down a wall in a single file asks the viewer to contemplate “natural” impulses towards obedience and order. Another large wall displays a video of surveillance footage at a bank accompanied by a soundtrack of either erotic or painful moaning playing loudly. The use of sound mixed with this ominous video fills the viewer with an enthralling and sickening anxiety because the cacophony of sound and imagery do not seem associated. Rosenfeld’s video installations convey a terror in the ominous and uncertain nature of their context, and deep discontent with the Chilean government in a manner that transcends historical knowledge because the feelings of anxiety are imparted in the uncertainty of what one is viewing which allows her audience to step into the headspace of the people, particularly the women of Chile who lived in a state of surveillance and anxiety.
The gallery highlights her interventions, and her work with other feminists of color via photographs documenting these events. Lotty Rosenfeld’s retrospective showcases her effectiveness in feminist activism in Chile especially with the birth of the “No +,” which is the movement by the Colectivo de Accosiones de Arte group to challenge the Chilean dictatorship through art interventions. Her video imagery proves to say so much and crowds the gallery space with the anxiety of life as a woman under a dictator’s regime.
I really like how you focus on the use of video installations in the exhibition and how they occupy the gallery space. Your description of the surveillance footage combined with the unsettling sound is vivid to describe the atmosphere of the show. One suggestion would be to tighten some of the wording. For example, the phrase “either erotic or painful moaning loudly playing overhead” could be simplified to make the sentence read more smoothly. You might also consider adding a little more context about Rosenfeld’s activism and the “No +” movement so readers unfamiliar with it can better understand its importance. Overall, this is a thoughtful and engaging response to the exhibition.
ReplyDeleteI like how your writing brings the atmosphere of the exhibition back to life, especially through your description of the video installations. When I saw the show, I didn’t pay much attention to the sound in the bank surveillance piece, but reading your response made me reconsider that moment. Your description of the “enthralling and sickening anxiety” really helped me imagine the intensity of that space in a way I hadn’t fully registered at the time. I also found it interesting how thinking back on the exhibition now, the ant video and the bank footage start to overlap through the way I moved through the space. Rather than feeling like two separate works, they blur together in my memory—the slow, ordered movement of the ants and the tension of surveillance unfolding almost simultaneously. It creates a different emotional reading than what I initially experienced in the gallery.
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