Fraction, Refraction: Artist Talk

This program brings together Kerr Cirilo, Clare Hu, and Basharat Ali Syed to discuss their encounters with images of national significance on the occasion of the exhibition Fraction, Refraction.

Fraction, Refraction brings together image-based works that push and pull highlighted, forgotten, or obscured layers of history to offer entry points into its constructed truths. Refraction is a scientific process whereby a wave bends as it passes through at least two mediums of differing densities, altering the wave’s speed and direction. Informed by this concept, the exhibition considers how national narratives bend in relation to the density of images that alter personal and collective memories.

Cirilo, Hu, and Syed each focus on their encounters with parts and pieces of images sourced from archives, documentaries, and online databases. Cirilo makes photo assemblages of visual references from various sources that draw out the imperial entanglement between the Philippines, Hawaii, and the US. Hu makes weavings with archival images of Chinese migrant communities from the American South to recover their contribution to the material history of the US. Syed makes multimedia installations with documentary footage and Google Street View images that provide partial perspectives of Kashmir that grapple with the delineation of its borders.

Although each artist works with a distinct area of research, they are all concerned with how images make meaning through their failure. Moderated by Zuhra Amini, the conversation will focus on how their practices tap into, respond, and shift the conditions of such failures.

Fraction, Refraction was made possible by Ramapo Curatorial Prize awarded each year to a second-year graduate student at Bard College’s Center for Curatorial Studies.