Abstract
Tory Fair: Portable Window premiers Tory Fair’s new video, photographs, and sculpture developed through an intergenerational dialogue with pioneering ecofeminist artist Mary Miss begun in 2018. Fair was inspired to steward some of the seeds Miss planted in the 1970s and is guided by her priorities: “Breathing space, human scale, and first-hand experience”, suggesting that art has the ability to give back and empower these fundamental rights. Reimagining one of Miss’s sculptures in particular, Portable Window (1968), Fair has created mobile framing devices in the form of large wooden wheels that roll through her neighborhood, creating videos that operate as an extension of the sculpture and capture what the sculpture is framing.
“This slow flipping is how I feel right now”, notes Fair. “Observing calm, and even beautiful moments, but then seamlessly moving to a disorienting and dizzy feeling, a rupturing of the frame, and uncertainty.” Framing space usually helps to formalize composition, but these videos frame in order to destabilize and disorient. The landscape tilts and turns. Fair’s playful work opens up several platforms to listen and learn in an unprecedented time of pandemic anxiety and cultural upheaval.
“During these times of reflection and introspection, Maine College of Art & Design (MECA&D) is privileged to present these artists whose concepts and implementation help us develop new insights, or knowledge at first sight,” notes MECA&D President Laura Freid. “We all need to find new ways to see and I am hopeful that these perspectives will provide inspiration for our students as they return to campus this month.”