Catherine Barber

catherinebarber.art

Artist Statement

Distance and proximity in experience, memory and place, bind together, shedding light on each other. My time-based video/installation works use the present to frame patterns of the past, in order to illuminate moments of absence and loss in a new way, that doesn’t directly reveal their intimacy, and predicts movement towards their displacement. These works emphasize how dual realities such as restraint and comfort can exist in parallel. My process involves appropriating my experiences, either adding extra content or cancelling out, and then re-animating to bring the emotional value back in. Specifically, by bringing together mundane objects, domestically used for packaging, protecting, absorbing, and/or transporting, with visual simulations of my childhood home, I am distinguishing how the sculptural element can give the projected image back physical form and depth, while simultaneously losing visual substance. The lack of definition veils viewers from the real, influencing an unfolding of time that emulates the rhythm of life through gaps. Without explicitly trying to change viewer’s perspectives, I am creating opportunity for ephemeral and dispersed views based on the patterns of shadows, reflected light, and impermanence of the videos. I am placing viewers in a condition of opening up a space, where they can subconsciously let into the duration of the transfixing environment, see the moments of interaction hidden underneath, and imagine an alternative reality from their own. I am questioning the potential of the recorded, re-represented, and abstracted material, to hold and maintain a sense of loss, or experience outside of the viewer’s knowledge.