W. Snyder MacNeil: Nuclear Portrait, Video Installation, Transparencies And Prints

About the Exhibition

Nuclear Portrait is a mediation on the metabolic relationship between parent and child.  It asks what is the nucleus– the Center– today for parent and child.  The installation will explore the threat of a spiritual vacuum at the core of the nuclear age, a vacuum which isolates and sabotages both individual and family and turns communication into a mirage.  This project evolved when the artist became a parent at an age when most parents become grandparents.  It impelled her to examine more closely her own existence as both parent and child, while exploring larger questions about parent/child relationships in the nuclear age.

The large scale video installation will consist of a bedroom with four monitors placed in a semi-circle in front of a king size bed.  Five video channels will re-play six minute tapes that consist of gestures and non-verbal noises from common household rituals– the walking from room to room, the opening and closing of plastic bags, the boiling over of water in an open pot on the stove.  A stereo soundtrack will be played from two corners of the room which consist of sound fragments that echo randomly throughout the installation. 

The photographer’s platinum and palladium works from the series Portraits of My Family and large-scale color transparencies from the series Daughter/Father will also be included in the exhibition.