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by Rebecca Stern

Allan deSouza has incorporated a variety of differing tools in his photography/mixed media. His lecture Rituals in Transfigured Time, presented at Savannah College of Art and Design-Atlanta on October 3, showcased many different series of his works. DeSouza described both the techniques he used as well as more in-depth interpretations that focused on the unwritten histories hidden in the images.

His series Threshold includes 24 images of airports, train and bus stations. The series focused on waiting areas and transitions between places in time where one has left behind the familiar, but has not yet arrived at the new venue. DeSouza mentioned that he wanted the viewers to imagine a first encounter with a new place and how they might emotionally engage with the physical space presented. The goal of the work is to demonstrate the promise of the West and this goal is achievable if we use Orientalism as the primary interpretation tool.

Orientalism can be loosely defined as the study of Far Eastern cultures by Westerners. Edward Said calls into question the very definition of Orientalism by pondering this fundamental assumption. “The interpreter’s mind actively makes a place in it for a foreign Other. And this creative making of a place for works that are otherwise alien and distant is the most important facet of the interpreter’s mission.” (Said, Orientalism, 25 Years Later, 2003) DeSouza’s artwork tries to show the relation between the East and West in his subtle imagery.

In his series In search of divine, deSouza searches for the hidden essence of a divine presence in the mundane components of ordinary existence. He relies on the viewer to ask, “What am I looking at?” and anticipates that the viewer will be capable of seeing beyond the ordinary and approach the divine essence present in the objects. In many of his photographs, deSouza’s own body provides the key elements - blood, hair, earwax, toenails and fingernails - and challenges the viewer to see behind the physical reality of these objects.

DeSouza uses these materials because they are organic and will eventually decompose, decay and disintegrate. He creates spaces that might look epic and immense, yet are really the opposite. He asks, “What does it mean to the viewer to be confronted with a landscape that is made out of blood?” Using his shavings, his bodily fluids and discarded parts acts as a form of cleansing and purification for him, yet might be dirty and contaminating for another. Perhaps this technique enables him to focus on the differences in the perceptions and appearances of the body in the various geographic locales of his images. Our social space is marked by the way we move within it. DeSouza elaborates on the process of the movement.

A video interview with the artist is here.

Stern is an MFA candidate in photography at SCAD-Atlanta.

Essay by Brett Osborn

Situationalism is defined as “recontextualizing the mundane in order to value the real. Events based upon experience rather than the object, but unlike postmodernism, the simulacra and meta-narrative are devalued.”

The evidence that postmodernism is waning is illustrated by the lack of cynicism of our present culture against the tenants of modernism. A post-postmodern zeitgeist can be seen by the shift away from the object towards complete bestowment of meaning onto the observer and the context of the situation in which the observer witnesses the art.

If we believe in Lyotard’s pronouncement that Postmodernism is the nascent state of modernism then today art is still on the first date. The de-evolution of modernism began with modernity. The shift away from object as art began with mass production and a consumption society. The object as a carrier of meaning could no longer exist in a throw away society. The object became merely a vehicle to present an image (simulacra) of our superficial values. Without the object existing to satiate a fetish our culture displaced this fixation upon the pop star. The artist became the art. Andy Warhol comes to mind but later artists took it literally.

Janine Antoni’s 1993 Loving Care performance at Anthony d’Offay Gallery in London is a case in point. She painted the entire gallery floor with hair dye using her hair as the brush. This placed her body as the instrument of art making. The shift from passive observer to participant became integral to the creation of the work. Without the observer being present the exchange of ideas such as the incongruity of women’s roles and self-identity with physical appearance would not have been communicated. The role of art began to shift away from the artist’s action upon a surface towards the experience of the viewer. In Thomas Struth’s photographs, museum attendees experience art objects but we are more interested in the attitudes of the people in the photographs than we are with the objects they are encountering. Read the rest of this entry »