Salt Pillars
form & concept | November 2023
"Corners of the buildings seemed to be crumbling away into fine dust that drifted downward, the granite was eroding unnoticed. Every window she saw on her way uptown seemed to be broken; perhaps every street corner was peppered with small change." -Shirley Jackson, "Pillar of Salt" (1948)
Salt Pillars is a group exhibition of photographs and sculptures by Eric Cousineau, Andrés Mario de Varona, Morgan Barnard and Michael Petry. The show features six series, each with a central motif that serves as a surreal container for human experience. Televisions, motel rooms, light boxes, glass forms and a makeshift photography studio become vessels for grief, anger, intimacy and growth.
The show's title references the Bible story of Idit, reductively referred to as Lot's wife in the book of Genesis. God transforms Idit into a pillar of salt when she's forced to flee the collapsing city of Sodom and longingly glances back. A modern touch point is Shirley Jackson's 1948 short story "Pillar of Salt," in which a New York tourist watches the city disintegrate around its oblivious inhabitants.
"Salt Pillars defiantly asserts the wisdom of looking back, despite the risk of devastation or even desolation," says Gallery Director Jordan Eddy. "Its imagery often abstracts the human figure or peripherally explores human presence, tracing the salty residue of sweat and tears that we leave on the world and each other."
Press
Andrés Mario de Varona wrote an essay for NPR about his TRIALS series, which was featured in Salt Pillars. “TRIALS aims to encapsulate those frictions of reality, wounds from survivors, and the ambiguity of human conflict,” he wrote. “In other words, it's about acknowledging ourselves as living memorials, people becoming testimonies to events that happened but are no longer there.”
My contributions: Curatorial
Artwork: Eric Cousineau (header image), Andrés Mario de Varona, Morgan Barnard (featured image), Michael Petry
Photography: Marylene Mey, Byron Flesher