Contesting and Bridging Boundaries and Borders, Remount
The US-Mexico Indigenous and Migration Experience
Robert E. and Martha Hull Lee Gallery
Miami University, Oxford, OH
March 11-24, 2024
Renderworks Model of Gallery
Please view the post of the original exhibit before going to much further. It will fully describe the creative goals of the project
On the return from Venice, we were invited to remount our exhibit for the College of Creative Arts at Miami University.
The Hull Gallery is a larger space, and time did not allow us to paint the walls the cayenne red that we used in Venice. But it did afford us new possibilities:
More control over technology. We were able to install small LED pinspots to achieve some lighting changes synced with the video
We added structures to both hide the technology control and to enhance the themes of boundaries and migration
Students in our theatre and social justice course were able to use the site to create a live performance
For this installation, I designed the layout of the space, built and installed the structural elements, installed the lighting and the video, and programmed lighting and video in a simple QLab system.
For the Venice install, the ECC had sent us SketchUp files of our space, so I did some 3D models in SketchUp. As a lifelong VectorWorks user, I’ve been improving my skills in RenderWorks over the past few years. These simple Renderworks models show some of the features of our first groundplan. The Miami mural would be the dominant visual on entering, with the video obscured on the wall and floor behind. A patron would have to turn left or right to get to the other side, and in doing so would catch sight of wire grid structures on which backpacks and other artifacts of migration would be hung. It is common to find these symbols of human existence abandoned at the border crossing.
The blue lights that served as a border along the floor here connect these wall structures to the video wall, and help the viewer journey past the mural to see the paintings and the video together.
Fiber would hang from the mural.
The projectors we have in stock needed to be all the way at the rear of the gallery to fill the front wall. So we had to rethink hanging the mural as a barricade in the middle of the room. And we were afraid people might not venture back behind it to see the video.
We did consider a barrier of fibers as shown here, thinking it might really be animated with the video projecting through it, but of course the clarity of the video had to be the first primary consideration.
The final installation
And theatre students performing in the space. Note they are creating images with fibers!
