Barbara Howard "Wanting a picture"

Installation with lights, objects, photographs, painting and sound-text. ‘The event of wanting resounds in the eye watching the other with envy. This is not an island scene weathering a heat spell of a sexual contact. But rather the demise of a contracted act of duplication between parent and child, the big and the little, two entities coupled in opposition. It’s the insistence on repetition brought to view – viewing the desires of the other met. Wanting a picture is but a stage in the disentanglement from the affectivity of a culturally enforced proximity between the mouth of the one and the ear of the other. As such it is a play in space between the voice and a chair; the photograph taking the disguise of a dinner guest charmed as he enters the room using his authority to proclaim the atmospheric enchantment accomplished by the wife’s commitment to interior decoration. No, this is not a scene of dispute between two look-a-like Spanish sisters, but another consequence of difference we are seeking. In the room the lights which brighten all there is to see go out replaced by another light, not meant to see by. This light surveys the space casting shadows, it’s own bare glare of reflected light separated from the light of the room depicting pictures to be taken and to be taken apart. It is these lights that are on trail, the purveyors of capture and captivation in this beached scene of representation. The objects in the room, a fine inventory of a chair, a table, a mat, a portrait, photographs, a skirt construction, and hair-do arc set-up in part to act as witness, juror, and objects submitted as evidence installed with the familiar invitational spacing of a dining room table set for dinner.’ (Barbara Howard, ‘Wanting a picture’, typewritten project description, archive De Appel / file Howard.)