I decided to re-appropriate Jeff Wall, because the first time around, I felt like I didn’t make good enough of an effort for the likes of him. I am impressed by his use of appropriation of artwork from painters such as Velasquez and Manet, whom he references in several works, not just stylistically through characters, but also compositionally. I luckily came across a link to the page of his MoMa exhibition that he had back in 2007, full of commentaries on his work and everything. It was incredibly insightful and helped me wrap my head around what Jeff Wall goes through when making a photograph. Here’s the link:
The pieces I find most compelling of his, especially upon reading his commentaries, are The Destroyed Room, Picture for Women, and A Sudden Gust of Wind. However, by reading the commentaries about these pieces, I actually decided to go with his other piece that I’m fond of, Insomnia. By not even making a single effort to find a commentary about Insomnia, I was free to interpret the work on my own, with some guidance from his previous commentaries about the other work I am drawn to. The Destroyed Room is an appropriation of the painting Sardanapalus, which is a depiction of the psychological and emotional dominance that the Napoleon ruling provided. Wall was also inspired to re-create window shop displays, with the twist that the Punk movement had given to commercialism. In Picture for Women, Wall appropriates the painting The Bar by Manet. Wall interprets Manet’s painting of how men and women stand in society, in everyday life, especially at the peak of women’s influence in the art movement of the late 1970s.
Through the commentaries of Wall on his own pieces, I decided to decipher Insomnia by myself. The photo is of a man on a kitchen floor. You don’t know whose kitchen floor it is. He looks to possibly be dazed or injured. He looks uncomfortable, but finds comfort from the floor. The overall colors of the photograph are greenish or sickley. They are sterile and cold. What enjoy about most of Wall’s photographs, is that he doesn’t give you dead away what he is imposing. With Insomnia, I wanted to create a tableau of myself, in relation to my concept of documentation of objects that tie me to El Salvador, even though I have never been. These objects are not made presented to be flashy, but rather calm and knowing. They are objects to provide comfort for the things that I have never seen or witnessed, but only that my mother has, about thirty years ago. I struggled with different photos, doing everything from photographing myself in the shower with my Salvadoran bathrobe on, to myself holding the cross through the window, to mimic Picture for Women, and then I decided to go outside and take it there. I tried different poses on the grass, and used different objects, but the less objects I used, I felt the stronger the work was. I decided to finally just lie in the grass with the translucent sheet covering me, like a corpse, holding a cross with folk art from La Palma over my body. I felt like it provided a sense of closure and comfort. Although I do not know much about my own mother’s past, having objects that were once hers and passed along to me give me a sort of attachment to something I never knew.
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