As previously covered in The Beacon, Wilkes’ Sordoni Art Gallery recently opened two new exhibitions simultaneously: the Formal/Informal: Innovations in Portraiture group show curated by the Syracuse University Art Museum and Why Am I Sad? by Dana Stirling. On March 26th at 5 p.m., the gallery hosted an Art in Context lecture featuring Dana Stirling. Afterwards, free refreshments were served. Art in Context lectures allow an artist to explain the creative process behind their work. In addition to the exhibit currently on display, lecturing artists often talk about their previous projects to demonstrate a common thread across their oeuvre.
Stirling shared her mental health journey and how it relates to her photography. She was born and raised in Israel. Her parents were British immigrants, and they never assimilated into Israeli culture. For this reason, Stirling describes feeling “like an immigrant in my own country” throughout her childhood. This sense of social exclusion shaped her worldview, as did her mother’s lifelong struggle with clinical depression.
Stirling primarily makes still life photography. As she puts it, “an object tells the story of a person.” Her first photo project documented her grandparents’ apartment in Israel, right before it was sold. The few items left behind, such as an old mirror and her grandfather’s belt, were the only physical remnants of the memories in that apartment.
Old photographs inspired Stirling’s next series. She remembers that her mother kept “highly curated” family photo albums, but at the same time, her mother did not have a close relationship with her relatives in real life. Stirling herself did not recognize any of these relatives’ photos: “I didn’t even know their names.”
When Stirling later moved to New York City for college, she would go to thrift stores and buy family photo albums. “I noticed that almost everyone had the same kinds of photos with similar subject matter, like birthday parties. I ended up feeling more connected to the people in these photos -total strangers- than my own family album.” She cut out these images and reappropriated them into her collage artwork.
Stirling then shared the inspiration behind Why Am I Sad? On her travels throughout the United States, Stirling began noticing lots of yellow smiley faces: a deflated balloon, a sign attached to a mailbox, even a decal on an old pickup truck. “I felt like they were mocking me,” she says. “The first couple times I saw a smiley face, I thought it was just a coincidence. But by the third time, I went, ‘Hey, this is weird.’” These images set the tone for the rest of the series. Some people assume that artwork about depression must involve “black and white” and “someone crying in a corner,” as she put it. But Stirling’s photographs are full of irony, whimsy, and color. The goal of this project is not understanding sadness completely, but rather learning to live with it.
In addition to photography, the exhibit has some interactive elements as well. There is a record player station that includes ‘sad’ albums. (The corresponding Sad Girls Club playlist is on Spotify.) In addition, viewers can take a card with an emoji image (heart eyes, crying) and place it below a piece which evokes that emotion. Finally, the personality analyzer is an old gadget that will reveal your true personality traits for only a quarter.
