Exhibition
U N P L A C E D / U N F A C E D
8 Sep 2016 – 12 Sep 2016
Event times
8th to 12th September 2016
Private view 6:00 to 9:00 pm, Thursday 8th September
Gallery talk 6:30 pm, Friday 9th September
Cost of entry
FREE
Address
- 65-67 Ridley Road
- Dalston
- London
- E8 2NP
- United Kingdom
Travel Information
- Bus 38, 56, 149, 277
- Dalston Kingsland, Dalston Junction rail
Unplaced/Unfaced is the first solo exhibition by photographic artist Reka Komoli. This show examines challenging questions of identity from two complementary perspectives: how personal identity changes over time, and how identity can be manipulated with potent ethnic masks.
About
Making allusions to the genre of the gothic uncanny, Unplaced is a meditation on how the Self becomes the Other with the passing of years. Against the evocative background of a ruined castle in a remote Welsh hinterland, the younger self and the older self seek each other out through the dim passages of time, and catch a glimpse of each other through a decaying mirror.
Drawing on the raw power of traditional Mexican masks, Unfaced is a series of portraits of the masks themselves, caught in the moment before they are worn, when they are replete with their full potential to create a new identity. The masks invoke the colonial Other—Spanish, French, and Yankee—as well as the demonised Other, and the ultimate Other of death.
This show provides a fresh and original triangulation of the idea of identity, and is a timely contribution to the contemporary debate on personal and cultural identity. When everything else is stripped away, what is it to become someone?