Facing a Portrait - Speaking in Pairs

Portraits in focus - revealing their aesthetic, material, social, and political layers

Can a portrait represent violence and healing at the same time? By juxtaposing iconic images created at points of conflict and growth in history, Speaking in Pairs examines how conflicting forces can be experienced in what initially appears to be a quiet photograph and how such evidence of being present, alive, can increase visibility or hasten our demise. Portraits allow immortality. But who gets to be pictured and seen? Who may tell their story?

Speaking in Pairs seeks to offer navigational references across time and geography, between works and the practitioners making, or pondering, them. It considers art's historical and contemporary response to oppression and crisis and offers representation to those impacted by extraordinary events. It unravels the dynamics between sitters, artists and viewers and how they complicate the image in ways that are not immediately discernible