Photos can spread lies and truths.
Regardless of what each frame portrays, California artists Jimin Lee and Paula Levine showed the images they create have the power to change people’s perception of accepted realities.
They displayed their work for the BoundarySpan series at San Jose State, which highlights how artists create a connection with students using their work.
Lee started the lecture by demonstrating her thought process and showing various photos she has taken.
The exhibition was free for all attendees, and approximately 60 people participated.
Lee works with found objects such as a bathtub that she interprets as a “container of her body.”
She found the photo to be symbolic to her. “I am entering into a very different cultural time,” Lee said.
The photo was her first work when she came to the Bay Area in 1995.
During her lecture, Lee mentioned similar artistic techniques akin to Photoshop from a book titled “Faking It: Manipulating Photography Before Photoshop.” Lee found herself to be fascinated by this technique.
Artists would cut and paste to create alternate or multiple photographic elements.
“I did so much of cutting and paste and image relation and using a variety of photographic elements,” Lee said.
Lee looks at photographs from the perspective of what happens and what you would see. She does not want her art to be in that same category.
“The way I am using my photographs are opposite; creating more fictional elements,” Lee said. “That is my really interesting way, or unique way, to using photographic elements.”
Her work generally covers mobility, displacement and labor while regarding them on a social and personal levels. Lee is currently the head of the print media program and a director of the contemporary print research center for the University of Santa Cruz.
Levine, a San Francisco State art professor, included video and sound in her lecture.
She showcased her various clips of an experimental narrative video called “Burials and Borders” where Levine documented her journey to Golan Heights, a rocky plateau in southwestern Syria, for her brother’s burial.
The documentary’s footage was recorded during the mid ‘90s when there was a peace negotiation between Israel and Syria.
Golan Heights originally belonged to Syria, but 70% of the land was under Israeli ownership. The land would eventually be repatriated to Syria.
Levine was interested by the nuances of war and conflict between Israel and Syria.
“In this case, what I’m particularly interested in is how these moments intercept a potential change,” Levine said.
Her brother was a settler in Israel. Levine decided to make her trip to Golan Heights seven years after his death.
“When you have these kinds of irreconcilable situations in your life, you end up either living with that fissure or you kind of try to mitigate it or address it,” Levine said.
Event director Alena Sauzade said these lectures are there to relate back to the curriculum among art students.
“Whether that be photography, spatial art, digital media, [or] factorial art, we kind of aim to really make sure the type of work [that] is being shown is also the type of work that our faculty are showing in our classrooms,” Sauzade said.
Sauzade said these events reflect students’ professional development because they can see artists talk about their work as a steppingstone to learn about their careers.
The next Art Gallery lecture event is on Feb. 4, featuring artist Jacqueline Kiyomi.