This winter at The Image Centre
Photography and performance art shine this winter at TMU’s The Image Centre.
Xie Rong performing Cut Piece (for the exhibition Yoko Ono: Peace is Power at the Museum of Fine Arts, Leipzig, Germany), 2019. Photograph by Alexander Schmidt
As we move through winter, The Image Centre at Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU) invites visitors to experience many exciting image-based exhibitions. On view now through April 2023 are documentary photographs by American photographer Mary Ellen Mark, “thoughtography” Polaroids by Ted Serios and a tribute and remake of Yoko Ono’s Cut Piece (1964) by Chinese-born artist Xie Rong.
Mary Ellen Mark, [Tommie peeking out of room window, Ward 81, Oregon State Hospital, Salem, Oregon, USA], 1976, gelatin silver print © Mary Ellen Mark, courtesy of The Mary Ellen Mark Foundation/Howard Greenberg Gallery
Mary Ellen Mark: Ward 81 presents the raw reality of Ward 81, a high-security locked psychiatric facility for women in the Oregon State Hospital back in 1976 – the state’s only one at the time. American photographer Mary Ellen Mark spent 36 days living there, along with licensed therapist and writer Karen Folger Jacobs, to photograph the patients, giving people access to their daily life, private thoughts, intimate reactions and intense medical treatments. Spotlighting the invisible, visitors will see rare photographs, audio recordings and archival materials from her experience living there – many of which are being shown for the first time.
This exhibition is curated by the Image Centre’s Gaëlle Morel and Kaitlin Booher, Newhall Curatorial Fellow, Museum of Modern Art, New York, organized by The Image Centre, Toronto in collaboration with Falkland Road Inc./The Mary Ellen Mark Foundation, New York.
Mind’s Eye: The Psychic Photographs of Ted Serios
Ted Serios, [Ted Serios], ca. 1964-1967, diffusion transfer (Polaroid) print. The Jule Eisenbud Collection on Ted Serios and Thoughtographic Photography, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
Explore a selection of Polaroids taken via “thoughtography,” a process named by Ted Serios, a man from Chicago. Mind’s Eye: The Psychic Photographs of Ted Serios features photography from experiments American psychiatrist Dr. Jule Eisenbud conducted with Serios between 1964 and 1967. Said to have the ability to psychically transfer his thoughts onto Polaroid film, visitors will see such creations on view, along with ephemera and experimental data from the Jule Eisenbud Collection on Ted Serios and Thoughtographic Photography. Considered by some to be physical manifestations of an unseen psychic force and by others as an elaborate hoax, see these Polaroids for yourself at The Image Centre.
Organized in collaboration with the Albin O. Kuhn Library and Gallery, University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), United States, it is guest curated by Emily Hauver, Curator of Exhibitions, University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC).
Xie Rong performing Cut Piece (for the exhibition Yoko Ono: Peace is Power at the Museum of Fine Arts, Leipzig, Germany), 2019. Photograph by Alexander Schmidt
To mark the opening of Japanese-American artist Yoko Ono’s 2019 exhibition Peace is Power at the Museum of Fine Arts in Leipzig, Germany, Chinese-born artist Xie Rong performed her own rendition of Ono’s performance Cut Piece. An example of performance as protest and iconic feminist artwork, Cut Piece was first performed by Ono in 1964. During the piece, Ono sat on stage in her best dress with scissors in front of her. She then asked audience members to cut off a portion of her clothing to take with them one by one. As she becomes more and more vulnerable, Ono passes the responsibility and experience of the performance into the hands of the audience. It quickly reveals how easily people become complicit in acts of violence.
Unlike Ono’s original film, Xie’s version consists of a two-channel video with both an overview of the performance and close-ups of Xie. She begins by saying, “My body is the scar of my mind.” Her clothing is cut until she’s fully exposed, just like Ono. This time, however, some of the audience demonstrated empathy and used their own clothing to cover up the artist.
The video installation of Xie’s film was guest curated by Toronto-based filmmaker and curator Simone Estrin.
All three exhibitions at The Image Centre are on view now through April 1, 2023. For more information, please visit theimagecentre.ca.