[Image description: A passage in an art gallery in-between exhibitions shows a white wall with a sheet of white plywood leaning against it, lit by a single light, with industrial-looking columns running down the center of the passage and along the opposite edge from the wall. On the image is a caption over a black bar that reads: on the on that on that wood or whatever that is, that metal.]
Framing the solo exhibition “Prophetic Memory,” this video remediates images of the NYC nonprofit art gallery, Artists Space, with the filmmaker’s grandmother’s descriptions of how she would use her interior design skills to design their exhibition. Because she couldn’t travel there because of disability and the risks posed by the Covid-19 pandemic (even as this show occurred during the first wave of NYC art spaces “returning to normal), she relies on the images she’s watching and describing to visualize her ideas.
The video considers access in relation to questions of class, design, and taste. The video was on view in both the gallery and remains on view on the exhibition’s website. The exhibition considers the liveness of an artwork, not just across virtual and physical space but also how time, asking when is the show if it remains on view after it’s “over” and started before an invitation was proffered?
“My grandmother, Annette Carter, worked as an interior designer since 1979 and became a member of the American Society of Interior Designers in 1987. In addition to specializing in designing residential interiors throughout the New Orleans area, my grandmother also designed several commercial jobs, including the offices for a savings and loan, where my dad worked as a lender; the ornate, marbled restrooms at a gourmet restaurant in the French Quarter; as well as student common areas at a local university, among others.
In the late 1980s, my grandmother began working as an in-house interior designer at Expressions, a design studio that made unique custom furnishings and offered interior design services to its customers. As of 1993, the company had 51 stores in 26 states, with its headquarters in New Orleans, catering to wealthy clients on St. Charles Avenue. A magazine article in which my grandmother’s design work was featured, from the New Orleans Gambit’s style and design magazine Home Smart, describes Expressions as “a way of thinking as much as it is a store.” My mom recalls the “gorgeous plush fabrics” and elaborate, vignetted displays throughout the store that integrated furniture, accessories, lighting, and themed architectural features. I don’t ever remember going there, but I remember when my grandmother and dad gave my mom an embroidered tapestry sofa and matching chairs from Expressions as a graduation present, my mom cried.
Although my grandmother was 85 at the time of this video’s making (she passed away in 2022), she continued to take on design jobs for long-time clients. For my exhibition at Artists Space, I asked her to collaborate with me in creating the exhibition design. Because of budget and time limitations, Covid-19, and her physical capacities, we decided that the best way to realize her vision would be to design an imaginary exhibition of what she would have done if the physical installation had been possible.
The video features my grandmother’s, my mother’s and my descriptions of Artists Space in between exhibitions––viewed on my mom’s tv in Gulfport, Mississippi and my computer in New York––alongside my grandmother’s descriptions of the exhibition spaces she imagined for the show. Artists Space’s image archive also hosts images and annotated descriptions of the pieces of furniture my grandmother selected from an estate sale website I used to furnish my own apartment.”
