Interior
I enter the space behind the screen and I am confronted with an
environment, disassociated from the gallery, a space that has been
self-contained and transformed into a small room. I look once again
at the screen, but now from the other side. In the small space I
am forced to stand close to the projection and an enveloped by the
curved radius of the screen. A table and stool sits in front of
this projected landscape. Sitting on the table are paints, a brush,
and small canvases. As I look closer, the canvases are paint-by-numbers,
objects I associate with a time long past or childhood playthings.
Should I sit and work, or are they just for show? Someone has started
one of the paintings and I pick it up to look closer, the other
side of the canvas repeats the notice Iıve seen earlier; telling
people that they have to register and move within the next seven
days. Next to it a title and a location, I realize the paint by
numbers is of a real place, an image from a real time. I sit and
paint a little, with the ever-changing landscape passing by in my
peripheral vision. The grating sound continues, but another sound
is playing as well. I turn around and face three small tables each
with a glowing television screen set behind and obscured by a translucent
panel, this is where the other audio is coming from. Each table
has a different book placed upon it, and a stool in front, inviting
to sit and read. I read about a history, the propaganda and reasoning
behind forcing a whole group of people from their homes. I read
about an individualıs origins within this piece, an examination
of his family and his place as an American. I read about ten sites,
ten camps where thousands were forced to live because of their race
alone. I move to exit this environment and I am confronted with
an image of windows on a train or a bus, and looking out the windows
are faces of complacence and of sorrow. As I leave the way I entered,
I pass the poem on the wall once again, and understand itıs story
and now I know.
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