The Wallach Art Gallery at Columbia’s show “Lotty Rosenfeld: Disobedient Spaces” is a
retrospective for the Chilean activist-artist. Archival documents are presented in tandem with
photography, drawings, and video installations highlighting Rosenfeld’s feminist interventions
and championing of the “No +” movement. The video installations included are the most
compelling use of gallery space, standing large and small across the rooms.
One piece displaying ants crawling up a wall in single file pushes the viewer to
contemplate the natural impulse towards obedience and order. Another large wall displays a
video of surveillance footage at a bank with an either erotic or painful moaning loudly playing
overhead. The use of sound mixed with this ominous video fills the viewer with an enthralling
and sickening anxiety. Rosenfeld’s video installations convey a terror and deep discontent with
the Chilean government in a manner that transcends historical knowledge. Instead she allows her
audience to step into the headspace of the people, particularly the women of Chile.
The gallery space highlights her interventions, and her work with other feminists of color
via photography documenting the events. Lotty Rosenfeld’s retrospective proves her
effectiveness in feminism and activism in Chile aside from the birth of the “No +,” as her video
imagery proves to say so much and crowds the gallery space with the justifiable anxiety of her
nation’s people and women around the world.
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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