A silhouette figurine in a dress is set on a red background. It casts a shadow, and its arms are bent upward at the elbow.

Liliana Porter, Matinee/ Matiné (still), 2009. Video. Courtesy of artist.

February 22, 2022–January 8, 2023

This exhibition foregrounds Argentinian-born, U.S.-based artist Liliana Porter’s decades-long consideration of “two realities”— “virtual reality” (a depiction of a thing) and the “real thing.” According to Porter, these dual realities are fluid and relational ideas, ones which open broader questions of how we see, communicate, and form meaning. Two Realities links to Professor Niko Vicario’s spring 2022 course “Curating between the Virtual and the Physical: Liliana Porter”, in which students will work with the Mead’s curatorial team to create a connected online exhibition. This evolving project can be accessed here: https://porter.wordpress.amherst.edu/. Student projects will launch at the end of the semester. 

Together the exhibitions will offer opportunities to reconsider the relationship of online and physical space, content, and experience through Porter’s work, and to reexamine Porter’s art with attention to technological change and the contemporary context.

Photograph of a golden bust of Jesus with a power cord wrapped loosely around its base and face angled downward, appearing to me

  

A rough etching of three cylinders spaced slightly apart, rendered in dense linework. Black yarn is attached to print in three s

 

Left: Dialogue (with penguin), 1999, Cibachrome. Courtesy of the artist. 

Right: Still Life #1, 1970, Etching and yarn. Gift of Roswell A. Schleicher (Class of 1921) and Susan T. Schleicher 1994.541.