Visual Arts in the Canadian Rockies , and the other at the Listhus Artist Residency Program in Iceland . The dizzying landscapes juxtaposed with occasional frames of random materials such as aluminum foil and fi brous cotton , caused the viewer to experience what Roe refers to as “ incongruities ”— subtle shifts in perception between what we sensorily experience in the world and what we experience in photographic depictions of such , calling attention to and subverting the illusion of reality frequently implied in photographic forms .
In an earlier body of work , Goldfield Studies , Roe responded to the histories and physical landscape of the Bushlands of Australia while living there as the artist-in-residence at the Visual Arts Center of LaTrobe University . Roe created a series of paired and multiple photographs and digital videos , combining a documentary approach with constructed interventions into the landscape , concerned with “ the discrepancies between space as experienced in the past , and as represented in the present ,” pairing stillness and movement against a backdrop of a landscape steeped in disparate histories “ constructed from the opposing perspectives of indigenous and colonial settler narratives , pastoral landscape representations , folklore and myth .”
Roe continues her explorations of loss , grief , mourning , and perceptual engagement with her experiments with branches of yew , in preparation for an upcoming artist residency in Spain , proximal to Portbou , the location of noted cultural critic and author of The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction Walter Benjamin ’ s 1940 suicide . Benjamin took his own life while attempting to escape from invading Nazi forces , after the French government ordered Spanish police to
Mountainfield Study ( Glacier , Rock , and Scrim ), Pigment Print , 2016
Mountainfield Study ( Installation View ), Orlando Museum of Art , Orlando , FL , 2016 ( Image courtesy of The Orlando Museum of Art )
return refugees into Nazi hands . As we delve deeper into global crisis , war , and a swelling fascist sentiment , and as our executive branch remains hostile to human life , Benjamin ’ s death becomes increasingly relevant . Also relevant is an engagement with what we perceive as truth or reality , and how we are shaped by the technologies through which we see the world . According to political theorist Hannah Arendt , “ The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist , but people for whom the distinction between fact and fi ction , true and false , no longer exists .” As we cease to critically examine what signs lead us to believe something is credible or truthful , we fall prey to the fabrications of opportunistic fascists .
Roe is deeply affected by our current political situation . Grief is a proper response . As an artist who is engaged with perception , representation , and the porous and malleable nature of what humans accept as reality , Roe ’ s experiments with “ incongruities ” provide necessary critical engagement with our increasing ability to accept duplicitous realities from sources posing as truthful ( with the photograph ’ s apparent verisimilitude as a starting point for this discussion ). Her use of the historically and politically loaded form of the landscape , which she believes to be a space in fl ux , is also signifi cant and relevant to the country ’ s mood of heightened nationalism and xenophobia . Walter Benjamin ’ s death was a result of a violent construction of geopolitical realities ; false borders enforced with a very real and callous disrespect for human life . This is a death repeated many times over , and constantly doomed to be repeated again until we question the feverish and violent defense of constructed realities . Both grief and a criticality of “ incongruities ” experienced in factuality are places to begin .
You can see more at : DawnRoe . com
23 www . ARTBORNEMAGAZINE . com