Hartnett Gallery presents: Sondra Perry:Double Quadruple Etcetera Etcetera I & II
January 22 – February 3, 2019
Opening Reception: January 31, 6pm-8pm
Addressing the issue of historically erased bodies, Double Quadruple Etcetera Etcetera I & II consists of two HD videos, each of which shows a lone performer (Danny Giles and Joiri Minaya) pulsing through a chaotic dance, only to be outdone by the frenetic attempts of a content-aware computer function to fill their bodies with the white wall behind them. Their hair —a historically politicized marker of racial identity—is left unaffected by the software, leaving a black swirl of movement to defy the system’s insistence on invisibility.
Sondra Perry is an interdisciplinary artist whose works in video, computer-based media, and performance explore what Perry calls the “slippages of identity” that define subjective experience in the digital world. Perry investigates themes of power and agency, especially as they are determined by race and gender identities. Embracing and integrating new digital platforms for installation and context-based artworks, the artist puts these questions of identity in conversation with contemporary articulations and embodiments of desire, materiality, labor, and history. Perry’s works are both highly political and acutely familiar with colloquial experiences of digital interfaces.
