Exhibition Review: I don't know her
© Carrie Schneider. Courtesy of CHART and CANDICE MADEY, New York.
Written by Sophie Mulgrew
Copy Edited by Robyn Hager
Photo Edited by Ece Yavuz
In I don't know her New York based artist Carrie Schneider explores the role photography plays in constructing biographical narratives. Schneider asks the viewer to consider how their understanding of people online is shaped by mediums of digital storytelling. Who are celebrities without paparazzi? Influencers without instagram? These questions lie at the center of the exhibition, which features a 16mm color film, an oversized chromogenic photograph, and a sculptural installation.
Schneider’s film, which runs on loop for four minutes at a time, is constructed around an interview clip of Mariah Carey from 2009, in which she is asked to comment on fellow A-list star Jennifer Lopez. Carey responds with a smile and says simply, “I don’t know her”. Following the interview, the clip quickly became a viral meme and GIF, gaining widespread attention and backlash. Now, more than ten years after the infamous interview occurred, Schneider has brought the clip back into the spotlight. In the artist’s film, the video of Carey’s face is shown being played on an iPhone. The footage is grainy and textural, and around the phone strips of color flash and dissolve in a strobe-like fashion. The film is projected at the end of an otherwise bare room, mimicking the way one might view their own phone screen in bed at night. Through this presentation, Schneider draws attention to the barriers that screens manufacture; the levels of removal from real life that they create. The viewer of the film recognizes Mariah Carey but not the context that surrounds her, therefore focusing not on Carey as a person, but rather the manner and medium in which her person is presented.
© Carrie Schneider. Courtesy CHART and CANDICE MADEY, New York. Photo by Elisabeth Bernstein.
Schneider’s installation similarly deconstructs the presentation of images. The large sculpture looks like massive rolls of film spilling out of a camera. The strips gather and fold against one another, creasing around their corners. Upon closer inspection, one realizes that the images on the roll are the same as those from the film. Schneider presents the same story in a new form. On the rolls are each individual frame of the film, the frozen moments of which reveal subtle changes in Carey’s expression and countenance. Schneider disrupts context again, and creates yet another layer of removal between Carey and the viewer. She zooms in on the physical process of the camera, highlighting the miniscule moments and mechanisms behind the videos we absorb every day. Schneider shows how the camera and its parts create, bend, and wrinkle around a person. At no angle of the installation can the viewer really grasp the “full picture”; they can observe and make sense of only snippets at a time.
© Carrie Schneider. Courtesy CHART and CANDICE MADEY, New York. Photo by Elisabeth Bernstein.
© Carrie Schneider. Courtesy CHART and CANDICE MADEY, New York. Photo by Elisabeth Bernstein.
Schnieder’s exhibition is timely and provocative. In our contemporary digital world, it is easy to absorb media without really considering it; to scroll mindlessly through instagram or past news channels, to make assumptions and stories about people based on a single moment or clip. By complicating and drawing attention to the role of cameras and film in this process, Schneider contemplates what “knowing” through a screen really means. She highlights the role of context and form in media consumption, and encourages viewers to look closely, and think critically, about the camera and its role in online storytelling.
