Shade My Eyes and I Can See You, an Exhibit by Zean Cabangis and Nikki Luna
Cabinets and collages make up this parataxis—two visions are placed side by side, with photographs as their coordinating conjunction. Zean Cabangis features acrylic pieces with photo transfers of urban spaces of rest while Nikki Luna compartmentalizes unrest, putting snippets from family photos of political desaparecidos in light box drawers. These multimedia approaches to the photograph steps towards a miscegenation, perhaps a necessary shift to adapt to the constantly evolving definition of image as both artists—and their images—struggle to negotiate value in meaning and relevance in signification in an image-saturated era.
The pull and push of the two different bodies of works are twofold representations of the phenomenon of the image. The image has the power to make one forget and remember, alternately adopting and adapting, both ways informing the viewer of its constant negotiations through various time-space rhetorics. Cabangis’ self-purging copies contain no trace of the blatant consumerist cornucopia of imagery that the artist seeks to forget. Nor does Luna’s pain-wracked images show violence that heavily contextualizes the photos, stressing on the need to never forget.
The two differ in content and statement yet both feature a subdued approach to imagery, somehow considerate of an increasingly benumbed audience. The premise is this: there is no other way of feeling for the image. Image is a deluge in our age. And seeing is not as important as living through the machinations that condition significations that quantify/qualify the image value. To better understand, one shades the eyes.
