FEATURE: Ren Picco-Freeman & Savannah Dunn
ⒸRen Picco-Freeman
Written by: Megan May Walsh
Edited by: Jana Massoud
Devastatingly alluring, darkly mystical, and eerily otherworldly, an aura of fervor saturates the striking images of photographer Ren Picco-Freeman and dancer Savannah Dunn in their collections Smokeface and Mourning Replica. Similar to the effect of a desperate witch frantically murmuring a spell under her breath, these images murmur their own incantation. They whisper to the lost fragments of yourself, begging them to converge to something whole - something resembling an identity you can recognize. The terrifying journey to an elusive self-actualization is precisely where both Smokeface and Mourning Replica stand still. Against the dark veil of confusion, Smokeface revolts, screaming a plea, both lyrical and chilling, to be found in a world where all seems lost. Giving ghostly and fantastical forms to the vagrants wandering the corners of the earth in search of themselves, Mourning Replica graces these lost souls with a touch of magic.
Ren Picco-Freeman and Savannah Dunn’s collections explore the limitless depths of self and endless confusion of identity under the fantastical allure of an eerie darkness. Navigating territories of isolation by acting as a vagrant in your own mind, these images reveal the frustration and terror of finding yourself amidst the pressures of playing the various roles of daughter, lover, friend, professional, and artist while finding the space to authentically express yourself. Whether it is screaming through a veil of darkness or standing still amongst variations of your face, the endless negotiation between the fear of losing yourself and the desperation to find yourself can be like a specter, forever haunting your mind. Picco-Freeman and Dunn’s collaboration explores this experience through an otherworldly perspective - one that strikes at the truest feeling of fear and simultaneously offers a sliver of hope for a magical breakaway.
ⒸRen Picco-Freeman
Ren Picco-Freeman is a Chicago-based dance, movement, and portraiture photographer who collaborates with movement artists and dance companies across the city. Regularly shooting in black and white, her work often incorporates fantasy elements with recurring themes of flight, strength, and surrender. Savannah Dunn is a choreographer, frequently engaging in cross-medium collaboration and sound design as a part of her performance practice. Together, Picco-Freeman and Dunn share a common interest in the darker themes of art that subvert the beauty and conformity expected from dancers and women. Wandering into the genre of horror, Picco-Freeman and Dunn masterfully illustrate the things that lurk within us - our emotions, fears, aspirations, dreams, doubts - erupting outwards. Emblematic of slightly disturbing imagery, Smokeface and Mourning Replica can leave a chill chivvying up your spine. However, it is often the things we do not understand or that are left unexplored that scare us the most - and more often than not those are the things that come from within you.
ⒸRen Picco-Freeman
Picco-Freeman and Dunn’s visual storytelling colors the pages of a dark fairytale. It is haunted by the specters of ourselves, threatening to dissipate any hope of identity to wisps of smoke and mist. It is visited by a powerful sorceress surrounded by masks of her own face, each one a version of herself that seems to infinitely multiply. Despite this dual terror of vanquishment to nonexistence - or becoming an empty copy of yourself, Smokeface and Mourning Replica offers the comfort of solidarity. Rooted in a desire to subvert the expectations of beauty, the artists’ collaboration allows viewers to witness Picco-Freeman and Dunn’s inner-journeys and perhaps catch a glimpse of themselves in the portraits.
Making several plaster casts of her face, Dunn hoped to capture the uncomfortable and paralyzing sensation of having too many roles to play. Adopting different dispositions around friends, family, co-workers, and her partner, the series of photographs paints this unsettling experience as an otherworldly phenomenon. Surrounded by suspensions of her own face, Dunn stands still with a witchy aura emanating from her. Perhaps with a supernatural essence she can cast a spell to prevent her from becoming an empty shell herself. Or perhaps it is a fate she must endure. The ending of this dark fairytale is unwritten.
ⒸRen Picco-Freeman
Smokeface and Mourning Replica are photographic collections that are eerily captivating and beautifully imagined. Navigating uncharted territories of the self, the imagery seamlessly blends horror and beauty, darkness and magic, and despair and wonder. Together Picco-Freeman and Dunn walk the delicate line between impossibly magical and magically possible with a dancer’s grace and a photographer’s eye - ethereal and unearthly.
ⒸRen Picco-Freeman
