Recipient Information
Location
New Brockton, Alabama
Medium
Multidisciplinary
Year of Award
2022
Grant or Fellowship
Southern Prize and State Fellowship
Grant Amount
$5,000
Artist Statement
The camera functions as a tool that crops. It flattens space, freezes time, silences sound. Photography cuts out all that makes the world around us alive - then, is the photograph a kind of death? And if the photograph is death - what does it mean to regenerate an image or to wear it as a costume? The photograph is a stand-in; both presence and absence, simultaneously. My current work approaches photography from this framework in order to explore my relationship to historical identity and cultural inheritance in the American south.
My practice begins with my family's stories, flickering on the theater screen of my mind. My first act of making is a performance for the camera, a way of fixing the mental images conjured by stories; rendering them visible and suspended on the surface of the film. My work attempts to “reverse the camera's crop” by returning space, time, and animation to the latent image of memory. By incorporating forms of installation, lens-based media, performance, and storytelling, my work overlaps the past with the present and collapses the fourth wall established in the still image.
The ineffable nature of this lived narrative is neither didactic nor linear. Instead, it is so many threads and my weaving hands tying them together: the photograph as time, frozen – the camera, a device capable of shapeshifting memory – and the story – an apparition moving across time and space, resisting stillness and singularity.
Biography
Jenny Fine (b. 1981, Enterprise, AL) is a visual artist and instructor currently living and working in Alabama. Rooted in the photographic form, Fine's practice employs time as a material in her exploration of both personal and cultural memory, identity, and our shifting relationship to the photograph in this digital, image-saturated age. Fine has shown her work in solo exhibitions at Geh8, Dresden, Germany (2012), Dublin Arts Council, Dublin, Ohio (2014); The Sculpture Center, Cleveland, Ohio (2015), Children's Museum of the Arts, New York, New York (2015); Wiregrass Museum of Art, Dothan, Alabama (2015/2018/2020); Stephen Smith Fine Art, Fairfield, Alabama, (2016); Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, Winston-Salem, North Carolina (2021); Gadsden Museum of Art and History, Gadsden, Alabama (2022); and Alabama School of Fine Arts, Birmingham, Alabama (2022).
Synchronized Swimmers
Year: 2021
Medium: video
My grandmother was in her mid-sixties when she learned to swim. Her lessons beganthe day she had an in-ground pool installed in her backyard. It was then that mygrandmother, my sisters, and I began our affair with water. Her pool became our mostfrequented place of play. Holding our breath, stepping into the water, we slipped intoour imaginations.Entering the immersive installation, viewers are transported to the bottom of mygrandmother's swimming pool. Monumental photographic cut-outs surround the viewer.Overhead, as if treading water, two photographic legs kick back and forth, animated byperformers/visitors via a pulley ystem.
Synchronized Swimmers, swim cap
Year: 2012/2021
Medium: archival pigment print
Size (h x w x d): 44"x60"
Synchronized Swimmers is a multimedia, photographic stage that juxtaposes the stillagainst the moving, 2D with 3D, in an attempt to create a phantasmagoric stage for ahighly costumed, multimedia performance to unfold. Relying on research and imageryfrom the Gulf Coast of Florida, including the Weeki Wachee Springs Mermaid Show,performers embody the photographic space. Fog, animated lighting, and sound lure theviewer deeper inside the story towards a willing suspension of disbelief.
Synchronized Swimmers
Year: 2021
Medium: Multimedia Immersive Installation/performance
Size (h x w x d): 40'x30'x48'
While on exhibit at the Southeast Center for Contemporary Art, "SynchronizedSwimmers" was divided into three adjoining rooms. Pictured here is the entrancegallery to the immersive installation which transports the viewer to the bottom of mygrandmother's swimming pool.
Fog, colored light, sound and larger-than-life photographic cut-outs of female bodiessurround the viewer. Throughout the three-month exhibition, dancers from theUniversity of North Carolina, School of the Arts, Department of Dance, embodied thephotographic costumes. Pictured here: three dancers enacting the role of the "bobbers"by animating a single painted tarp through repetitive movements. This improvisationaldance is meant to reference the female body floating or at play in the water; while alsoreferencing the historic "ordeal by water" or "swimming witches", a test used todetermine the accused's guilt or innocence of witchcraft.
Synchronized Swimmers, photo gallery
Year: 2012/2018/2021
Medium: archival pigment prints
Size (h x w x d): 44"x60" prints: 15'x28'x48
Synchronized Swimmers, installation view of the photo gallery bathed in blue light. Tenlarge-format (44"x60") black and white archival pigment prints image the bodies of myfamily and me - while hovering/floating over the surface of a xerox copy machine. Increating these works, I was considering the camera as a space for performance, themoving eye of this large format scanner recording our still bodies, suspended indarkness, floating above the glass.
Synchronized Swimmers
Year: 2021
Medium: video
Three dancers perform the role of the "bobbers" by animating a single painted tarp. Thedancers' repetitive movement is meant to reference the female body floating or at playin the water while also referencing images of the historic trail by water or "swimmingwitches" which was once a test for (mostly) females used to determine the accused'sguilt or innocence of witchcraft."Bobbers" is one of three unique audio compositions commissioned by Jenny Fine forSynchronized Swimmers - sound compositions were recorded and edited by TaylorShaw. During the live performances, the recorded audio mixed with the live sound ofthe tarp being animated by the dancers.
Synchronized Swimmers
Year: 2021
Medium: Video
A UNCSA dancer embodies and animates the oyster costume in front of a backlit10'x30' hand-colored photograph printed on tissue paper and cheesecloth. Oystercostume was created with foam, paint, and fabric."Beach" is one of three unique sound compositions created for SynchronizedSwimmers by Taylor ShawListen carefully for the live sounds of oyster creaks layered over recorded audio.
Synchronized Swimmers
Year: 2021
Medium: Immersive Multimedia Installation
Size (h x w x d): dimension vary
Returning space and time to the still image, I created "Flat Granny" - a lifesizedphotographic cut-out of my now deceased grandmother, worn as a costume. Playingthe role of a siren in Weekiwachee's Mermaid show, Flat Granny performs "drinking acoke underwater".Photographic sculptures (clamshells) are made from archival pigment prints, foam, andpaint. The photographic backdrop (10'x30') is a hand-colored photograph printed ontissue paper and cheesecloth.
Synchronized Swimmers
Year: 2021
Medium: Immersive Multimedia Installation
Size (h x w x d): dimension vary
This photographic panel (10'x30') considers the public spectacle of "Swimmingwitches". The backdrop is created from a hand-colored photograph, printed on archivaltissue paper and cheesecloth. A painted tarp extends the photographic water into the3D space of the viewer. Heads suspended within the tarp are connected to pulleys,inviting the viewer to participate in and execute the up and down "bobbing" motion thatwould determine the accused witch's fate.
Synchronized Swimmers
Year: 2021
Medium: Immersive Multimedia Installation
Size (h x w x d): 19'x48'x60'
Deepest interior view of the immersive installationConsidering the story of Odysseus and the Sirens as another narrative of women andwater. I began to wonder what happened to the Sirens after they lost their allure, thepower of their song over Odysseus. Mythology says that overcome with this loss - thesirens threw themselves into the ocean and drown.Here, my maternal living grandmother plays the role of the drown siren, photographicdisembodied human ears (made from photographs, foam, and paint) and 3Dphotographic shells dot the underwater coral reef made from upcycled rubber. WhileGranny, in the background, eats a banana - another underwater feat performed by theWeekiwachee sirens in the early 1960's Florida roadside attraction.
Synchronized Swimmers
Year: 2021
Medium: Immersive Multimedia Installation
Size (h x w x d): 19'x48'x60'
Installation wide view, performance still.Three hand-colored, photographic backdrops (10'x30' each) define the third room of theimmersive installation.Draped sheeting catches colored light. While fog, fans, and costumed performersanimate the still image in a highly orchestrated improvisational performance.The immersive installation invites viewers to step inside the photograph - inside thestory - and consider the various perspectives these juxtaposed images create.