Emily Roysdon ‘scenic, say’

Kunsthalle Lissabon presents scenic, say, the first solo show in Portugal by Stockholm-based American artist Emily Roysdon, taking place from May 20th to September 2nd, 2017.

Queer history and social space have always interested Emily Roysdon generating an interdisciplinary working method with projects taking the form of performances, photographic installations, print making, texts, videos, curating and collaborations. Her notions about what it is ‘unseen in time’ and the politics of transitions had recently formed Uncounted, a site-specific project that has unfolded over several years through a series of related questions and visual vocabulary. At the core of the project is a 23 part text that engages a vocabulary of movement, margins and trespass. Drawing on texts by W.H. Auden, David Hammons and Gertrude Stein, the work considers “uncounted experience,” what is “beyond the will to measure,” posing such questions as “What is time if not activism?” and “What instruments have we?”

For scenic, say Roysdon is moving on from these 23 short pieces, which are by turns abstract, poetic and political, into a more personal project. At Kunsthalle Lissabon Roysdon uses photography to deepen a sense of loss in relationship to the aliveness of time. Using the theatrical tropes of perspective and prosceniums Roysdon exhibits variations of the dynamics between movement, image, stage, alive and lost. Through photography, printmaking and installation the exhibition combines gridded mural sized images with collaged silver gelatin works. These analog prints, also screen printed, are standing in the room, off the wall, in order to present the performative contrast between the image strategies and share the commitment of the artist to reanimate in scale the social space.

The sense of loss is further depicted via a need of a horizon which rests quietly in the photographs. The images appear unfinished, uneven, linking the idea of the before and the after. Roysdon’s text Uncounted echoes in scenic, say as fragments of that work are screen printed in the collaged works. In scenic, say Emily Roysdon shows her research into what is lost in time and how this is staged and memorialized. Thinking through death and theatre she offers the public a poetic glance of her personal, abstract and political imaginary.

 

Kunsthalle Lissabon (press release)