We Are Not Who We Were

Rachelle Viader Knowles
February 28 – March 30, 2002

The installation is comprised of two elements, an introductory light box and a darkened space with two video projections. The work presents a relationship between two characters, suggested through the language of the face and the gaze.
Light box – A 4′ x 1′ light box displays a duratran of a male chest with pierced nipples and a tattoo of Latin script in a Celtic font non sum qualis eram, translates as ‘l am not who I was’.
Video projections – Two silent, monochrome circular projections, 5′ in diameter, show cropped faces on opposite sides of an otherwise empty space. The projections are in slow motion with a very slight strobe lending a filmic quality to the video. The faces display expressions that slide between pain and pleasure and appear to interact with each other with side-ways looks and glances.
Within the broader spectrum of my work, time, narrative, memory and communication continue to be the fundamental themes. By playing with pace and repetition, expanding moments and examining the role of history and memory in the construction of both individual and collective identity, I attempt to trouble linear notions of time. My installations present narratives, either literally with the use of text fragments or quotations, or figuratively through video or photographic images. I am interested in relationships and in-between zones – the surface where inner self and
outer persona merge; the space of dialogue; connections between people and places and in the idea of humans as homo fabula: story tellers, creatures that exist in the fluid realm of narrative.

Rachelle Viader Knowles