VUES/VIEWS
ABOUT THE INSTALLATION
AMIE SIEGEL
BORN 1974, CHICAGO, ILLINOIS; ACTIVE BROOKLYN, NEW YORK
Amie Siegel works in film, photography and sculpture, investigating value, cultural ownership, and image making. Her double-sided work Vues/Views, comprised of a film and work on paper, is a critical consideration of the role of 19th-century French panoramic wallpapers animating interiors in the United States to this day. These proto-cinematic, handblocked papers frame the interior as exterior, unfolding views of distant places, mythologies, and histories in sequential horizontal tableaux. They also allow the viewer’s gaze to travel without leaving the room, creating a voyeuristic expedition of sorts, replete with issues of exoticization and otherness, domination and control. Vues/Views traces such “panoramic papers,” many of which are still produced today, in homes across the United States, including Les vues d’Amérique du Nord (Views of North America, 1834) by French wallpaper manufacturer Zuber: a pastiche of imagined scenes of pre–Civil War life, as the nascent republic evolved from colony to colonial power. In Siegel’s film, the wallpapers and their locations become a prism through which scenes of power, privilege, race, and class refract and converge, asking us to consider continuities between this country’s past and present. Collaborations with a range of fellow artists, communities, and participants reflect on the wallpaper’s social implications, giving voice to multiple perspectives. The artist’s verso panoramic is culled from discarded scenic rolls she found at the Zuber factory in France. Siegel reframes these moments of incompletion and absence to materially manifest the erasure and distortion that occur through the representations of people, landscapes, and cultures across time.
In collaboration with Davóne Tines, Alma Lee Gibbs Tines, and John Hilton Tines Sr.; Alcorn State University Sounds of Dyn-O-Mite Band; Joe Baker (Lenape, Delaware Tribe of Indians); James Coleman, Terrance Hamilton, Jua ‘Wan Lewis, Pendennis Club Friday regulars, and Dawn Heller.
Producer Andrew Fierberg. Line Producers Christian Detres, Joe Serkoch. Production Coordinator Melissa Detres. Director of Photography Michelle Marrion. Steadicam Ben Spaner. 1st Assistant Camera Dietrich Teschner, Bridgett McQuillan, and Gary Walker. Camera Production Assistant Rachel Brown and Brent Acuna. Gaffer/Key Grip Bryan Edwards. Gaffer Ted Ayd. Key Grip Elliott Snell. Dolly Grip Alex Bond. Media Manager Robert Granata. Sound Recordist Taylor Packett and Marianna LaFollette. Music Recordist Ophir Paz. Editor Amie Siegel. Sound Mix Gisburg Smialek. Post-Production Coordinator Ina Ho. Wallpaper Installation by DecoRada Alan Rada, Anthony Ali, and Marco Dávila.
Thanks to Pierre Frey, Outset Contemporary Art Fund, and Thomas Dane Gallery.
ACCESSIBILITY RESOURCES
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