Whose Bare Life

by Dorit Cypis

March 30 – March 31, 2019
12 PM – 6 PM
March 28, 29 – open by appointment

Mandarin Plaza 103 970 North Broadway, Los Angeles, 90012, CA

 

“On Captiva Island, I would ride an old bicycle a few times a day from the Gulf side to the Bay side – over a mile-long dirt road that meandered through tropical jungle. Wanting to understand where I was, I often left the road to walk amongst the unfamiliar flora and remember clearly the exact moment I recognized that the largest of the trees had grown huge endless limbs around other trees…suffocating them! Trees…were choking the life…from other trees. I couldn’t stop clicking my camera, as if taking one more photograph would help me understand what was happening around me.

Most of the day, one thread connected me back to the American mainland, the voice of one or another media announcer reading the daily news whispered through iPhone earplugs, into my ear. Daily, for 5 continuous weeks, I listened to unconscionable and seemingly racist police violence erupting across America. The violence I was hearing in my ear was an intimacy that was blinding… and here I was…in the jungle…amongst trees that were inhaling each other. Strangely, this provided me a way to feel viscerally connected to the violence I was hearing. After printing a series of photographs, I taught myself visual braille in order to silkscreen braille text across the surface of each image – ha an oxymoron of communication…as these words cannot be felt by the blind, nor read by a majority of the sighted – WHOSE BARE LIFE–Whosebarelife.”

Whose Bare Life (braille)

Dorit Cypis, 2014
18 unique prints – photographs + silkscreen
Archival pigment print, ink Hahnemuhle rag paper 34” x 44” each