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 I¹ve 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 individual¹s 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 it¹s story and now I know.