
The Rectangle's Sharp Stare
- Publisher
- Art and Theory Publishing
- Year
- 2015
- ISBN
- 9789188031235
- Specifications
- Hardcover
110 pages
19 x 25 cm
English and Swedish
Text by Karolina Ramqvist, Nina Overli, Lizzie Lloyd
Design by Kolqvist
In this photographic series the gaze is turned towards closed rooms such as prison cells, exploring the idea that they resemble a camera in the way they subject light to control, only allowing it in under certain circumstances. Using this as a point of departure, the work explores spaces from a fundamental, immediate, and physical perspective. What emerges from the darkness? What does the privilege of being able to choose where you want to be mean? What happens to a person when their ability to act is limited to the narrowest of spaces, when their choices are minimized? The images carry an atmosphere of surveillance, a feeling of being unwillingly or unwittingly watched. By using simple means such as light, reflections, sound, rhythm and space, the work conveys a feeling of humanity as something limited, a shackled spirit whose strength and individuality have nonetheless remained intact.