we only see by the water in our eyes with Dawn Roe
Dawn Roe
we only see by the water in our eyes with Dawn Roe
Join us via Zoom on Wednesday, October 22nd, at 7 pm EDT
This talk will bring together works spanning almost five years of activity from Dawn Roe’s indefinitely ongoing series, DESCENT ≈ An Atlas of Relation, with a particular focus on the current iteration prepared for her upcoming exhibition, Super | Natural, opening in November at Tracey Morgan Gallery in Asheville. Roe will share selected works from the exhibition that question common usage of the terms “nature” and “natural,” while embracing the spectral associations of the above, and beyond. The title for this gathering comes from a moment on the Multispecies Worldbuilding podcast where curator Sarah Lookofsky spoke with poet and artist Cecilia Vicuña about a beautiful phrase she had written – that “the reason we see is because of the water in our eyes” – such a perfect and sort of haunting notion, leading to thoughts not only of our sight as human being(s)/bodies, but the fascinating eyes of other sighted creatures (like our fish friends of course, but so many others). In this paraphrased form, we only see by the water in our eyes, Roe prompts us to consider what occurs when the water leaves our eyes – in the form of tears generated from emotion, and the potential for the energy of despair to be transformed into something generative and positive – but also, perhaps, what occurs when the water leaves our eyes in a more final form.
Dawn Roe (b. 1971, Sault Ste. Marie, MI) was born and raised amidst what are now known as the Great Lakes where she developed a long term interest in land/water relations between human and more-than-human communities. Informed by early studies in experimental filmmaking and darkroom-based photography, Roe’s site-responsive practice combines historic and contemporary photographic methods with digital video to examine the role of these media in shaping personal and social understandings of our environment. With recognition of her response-abilities as a white woman from settler ancestry, Roe approaches land and water tentatively, as an uninvited guest. Her current work seeks to develop methods of respectful engagement with place centering interspecies relations as vital to supporting the health of interconnected waterways and the communities they support. Roe received a BFA from Marylhurst University and an MFA from Illinois State University. She divides her time between Asheville, North Carolina and Winter Park, Florida where she serves as Professor of Art at Rollins College. In 2013 she founded the public art space Window (re/production | re/presentation) and served as the curator through 2020, when the project concluded. Her work is represented by Tracey Morgan Gallery in Asheville, NC.
Instagram: @dawnroe
Website: https://dawnroe.com/
