Installation views The Body of the Image
Digital prints adhered to the wall; sculptural objects on shelves
Left: Blue Barren, oil on canvas, 200 x 150 cm

The Body of the Image is also a multi-media
installation that sets out to investigate the nature
of the contemporary media image and the
precarious position it occupies in our collective
consciousness and social memory. Digital prints
derived from enlarged newspaper photographs
and articles form room-sized image ensembles
papered directly onto the wall.

Visible are images of opposition leader Aung
San Suu Kyi carried by her supporters in Delhi;
plunderers with the portrait of one of the richest
men in Indonesia, the ethnic Chinese Lim Sioe
Liong; an article on an unidentified leg found in
the rubble of the Oklahoma City bombing; and
a fragment of an article quoting a survivor of
the war in Bosnia.

The images in this installation stem from a
larger group of newspaper clippings collected
throughout the 1990s. Taken out of their daily
news coverage context, they exist at a temporal
remove to the immediate present and are comprised
of two basic groups. One of these features people
carrying images of people, while the other has to do
with rituals and rites involving human remains.

Below: a picture of a Kurdish mother
at a demonstration following the shooting
of her son Mustafa; Pakistani rockets
presented at a military parade in Islamabad;
a Palestinian girl holding a picture of
her murdered father; and relatives of
missing Chileans in Santiago
celebrating the arrest of Pinochet.

A series of objects placed on
shelf consoles are installed on
the digital ensembles. Some of
these employ paint as a sculptural
material, while others consist of
various different materials ranging
from plaster, varnish, and oil paint
to found objects and household garbage.

Installation views The Body of the Image
Digital prints adhered to the wall; sculptural objects on shelves
below: Untitled, oil on canvas, 46 x 46 cm

Due to their extreme enlargement, these images
expose the offset print screen they consist of,
calling attention to their respective reproduction
process and dissolving into an array of dots as
the viewer approaches the wall. Thus, the
intelligibility of the reproduced image and the
material languages of the various media used
are contingent on their distance to the viewer;

one recedes as the other grows clearer,
revealing themselves in reciprocal proportion
to the viewer's proximity to the painted surface
and wall. Here, in a sense, the body is
subtracted from the image and reinterpreted
in the objects in a media-reflective inversion,
giving rise to a dialogue between digital print,
sculptural object, and painted surface.