robert(a) marshall, Bardo Road

About

The Bardo is, in the Buddhist tradition, a transitional state between incarnations. In robert(a) marshall’s work, the Bardo is a multifaceted metaphor, suggesting the period after their mother’s death, the shadowy interregnum of the Trump regime, and the isolated, suspended time of Covid. In a body of work completed before the pandemic, originally scheduled to be shown at Participant in June 2020, they took iPhone pictures, through car windows, during travels throughout the U.S. and Mexico. These were then printed on reflective surfaces — vinyl, Mylar, Dibond. This elusive work explores the uncertain and contingent nature of perception by embodying the performative aspect of seeing. In a second body of work, completed during the pandemic, marshall used dance and Zoom video to investigate the relationship between performance and identity formation. Gender is understood in this ongoing project as something always in creation, always being done. These videos, rather than being expressions of a fixed, specific identity, are explorations in which possibilities are conjured. They explore the liminal zone between virtual and physical spaces. And, using family photos and found texts, they investigate how the past haunts the present, specifically the ways in which, for the artist, the current pandemic has evoked the AIDS crisis. Bringing the work full circle, stills from the videos were once again printed on reflective surfaces such as Slickrock paper and mirrored Dibond.