Woman on the Run at 21c Museum Hotel
Be prepared to be transported to the film noir era of the 1950s and 1960s when you visit Tracey Snelling’s Woman on The Run at the Street Level Gallery at 21c Museum Hotel.
Snelling, an artist based in Oakland, Calif., intricately combines architecture, scale modeling, video, photography and 3-D storytelling into a multimedia narrative of an ill-fated woman, replete with old Hollywood glamour and the suspense of a vintage Alfred Hitchcock film. The main character, a combination of heroines and femme fatales from 1950s and 1960s film noir, seeks to escape her fate. A crime has taken place, and she is wanted for questioning. Throughout the installation, different clues are given about what might have happened and who the woman is. Is she the victim — or the villain?
An alternate world of shrunken buildings, neon signs, and a life-sized motel delivers clues to help viewers decipher the fragmented storyline. The viewer quickly becomes a witness and, at times, a detective. Video plays in windows, and conversations can be overheard. What is the truth? One thing is certain: Nothing is what it seems.
“Driving down the street at night, I look at the lit windows of the houses that I pass, and I wonder who lives there,” said Snelling, explaining the exhibition’s origins. “What is going on right at this moment behind that curtain or darn shade?
“An old motel along the side of the highway sits broken and abandoned. I want to know the stories of the people who stayed there, the history of the people who owned it, and why it is no longer inhabited. Better than sifting through true stories for an interesting one, I prefer to makle up the profiles of the inhabitants by leaving subtle clues that can be interpreted in many ways.”
The installation of Woman on The Run was organized by 21c Museum as part of an ongoing series of solo exhibitions that highlight individual artists represented in the 21c collection. Part of the exhibition will be traveling to the Frist Center for Visual Arts in 2011. Woman on The Run was originally commissioned by and shown at Selfridges in London during Frieze Art Fair in October 2008.
Snelling was recently one of 13 artists chosen by the Sundance Institute to be presented as part of the 2010 edition of New Frontier at Sundance Film Festival.
Posted by Ivonne Rovira
