Open Door Arts is now exhibiting Megan Bent: “Slowly, the Sun Weaves Past Into Present” at the Cultural Equity Incubator.
There will be an Opening Reception on October 26, 2023 from 5-7pm. Please use this link to RSVP and learn more.
The show will be on view from October 12, 2023 – February 12, 2024.
From the artist:
This exhibition brings together two bodies of work, Latency and I Don’t Want To Paint A Silver Lining Around It, for the first time. Latency explores hidden disabilities, companionship, stigma, and the medicalized body. Printing my medical imagery reclaims my agency as a patient. I create these images with love and care, and in the process, the parts of me that are seen as deficient in the medical world are transformed into living temporal pieces of beauty. I Don’t Want To Paint A Silver Lining Around It explores my experience of being immunocompromised and high-risk in the pandemic. The subject matter highlights isolation during prolonged sheltering in place, daily walks, masking, doctor visits, medical treatment, changing warning signs at the pharmacy, and rest.
All of the images were created through chlorophyll printing which uses photosynthesis to print images onto leaves. Through this process I connect disability and nature, claiming disability as a valuable part of diversity.
Chlorophyll prints (where one exposure may take up to 72 hours) are created through a cooperative relationship with the organic materials and environment. It is a process that celebrates care, interdependence, slowness, and adaptability – values of belonging I find in the disability community.
Shown together, the images collectively call attention to a multiplicity of disability experience. The fact that chlorophyll prints are impermanent, and will continue to decay over time, underscores the
interdependence and impermanence we all share. The work is exhibited in two connected methods. Large pigment prints of the leaves when they were first printed (created through a digital scan.) Accompanying these are the printed leaves themselves.
Framed and covered with blackout cloth, visitors must lift the cloth to interact with chlorophyll leaves. This helps protect the leaves from UV light that accelerates their biodegradation and provides an intimate viewing experience. This link of past and present emphasizes connection and non-linear flexible time.