Julianna Anderson’s (2015 CBU Visual Art Graduate) senior show Anonymous Memories ran the month of December in the CBU Downtown Art Gallery. Anonymous Memories could be described in one word: cerebral. Playing with memories real and imagined, Anderson provided two separate forms for the viewer to identify with.
The first form suspended from the ceiling, touching the ground with weighted elegance. Different jewel toned string fastened photographs at shoulder height. Anderson utilized embroidery as a chance to collaborate with the photographer, threading the actual photo with a tactile element. When questioned about this technique, and whether or not a viewer could touch it, she encouraged that kind of response. After all, Anderson herself had repurposed the photos. “These memories will never be my own [but] I decided to make them my own by changing aspects of each photo.” In this sense, the viewer is invited to experience her new memory.
These new memories play out like the ones we carry from our childhood. Black and white they stand still in our mind until the moment grabs us again, drawing us into the experience with vivid color. Anderson’s string takes the viewer along a tactile path back into her brain and our own.
Pointing at Boy With Red Tie she beamed as if it were her own brother.
“He is so proud. I have a bunch of his family photos.” The red tie pops against the fading black and white photograph. Staring at the photo one begins to question whether or not the memory actually occurred to them but is forced to move on as the intense proximity of the other photographs makes the eye jump laterally. Down the row the eye walks a familiar path that has never been traversed, déjà vu running rampant in the gallery space.
Stepping back from the stringed photographs, they resemble bars and prohibit the viewer from touching the second form of memories in Anonymous Memories. Behind this string curtain a wood collage hangs off of the wall. Various blocks assembled in a wooden 3D Piet Mondrian configuration held black and white forms. Stepping closer one sees that interspersed amongst the wood blocks sit rubber brains in gradation from white to black. The literal gray matter sprawls out against the wall but the ones that stick out the most are charcoal black. It is here the viewer catches what Anderson meant in her artist statement by “some see[ing] it as the aging of the mind from birth to decay or ignorance to enlightenment.”
On the wall the memories cease to be playful and blur the lines like steps in gradating grays – the artist has drawn her line in the sand. Not all memories are ones we wish to experience together but they do make us who we are.
Julianna Anderson provided the kind of experience that makes you remember why you are you and then love her for it all the more. The viewer leaves the gallery holding onto both images of the show and the memories previously carried into the exhibition.
Julianna Anderson can be found online via instagram at @julimakesstuff.
