Pamela Chipman, Photography Exhibition and Video Installation

October 4-26, 2019
Opening reception: Friday, October 4, 6-9pm

Art at the Cave
108 E. Evergreen Blvd
Vancouver, WA

Artist Pamela Chipman is pleased to announce new works in Photography and, two new video installations at Art at the Cave Gallery in Vancouver, WA, October 4-26, 2019.

Utilizing multiple mediums, Pamela Chipman’s work explores personal identity and human interconnectivity to express inner states of awareness and isolation. Interweaving imagery with language, movement and sound, Inner Voices contemplates the body/mind/spirit connection and specifically how language builds, shapes and dictates memory and our sense of self.

Working in non-linear modalities, Inner Voices creates an immersive experience both intellectual and sensory. In one aspect, motion detection software triggers unique video/audio content of women photographed in silhouette compiled into animations. The silhouettes create a haunting two-dimensional profile that are at once objective and nondiscriminating, and therefore unifying, but speak to issues of domesticity, loneliness, trama, loss and ultimately, reconciled transfiguration through a synthesis of mutual experience.

The voices we hear, reveal intertwining narratives that tune us in to our inner voices and navigate how we move forward through time and backward through memory. These sound elements trigger recollections, emotion, our internal critic, or the mundane thoughts that occupy our everyday minds. While the animations move through space and time – using props to represent identity, power, and grace – the artist reminds us of our shared humanity, of our sensate and often unconscious motivations, and the outer manifestations of our inner state.

In Loose Threads, Chipman enduringly chronicles how easy a life can become unravelled. The artist captures the raw, true story of a young woman emotionally scarred by the psychological oppression of a masculine dominant culture. The story takes place in New York City in the late 1970s, but through this video Chipman illustrates how vulnerable women can be – we’re reminded of the far reaching Me Too Movement – and how little has changed culturally for women who are often left to deal with the results of trauma by themselves, struggling to find their way forward.

Chipman also presents photographs and gilded prints of the images that inspired the Inner Voices video. Each image radiates a luminosity that captures the deliberateness of women-as-subject. We see the subjects as captivating individuals demonstrating their strength, adaptability, and resistance to the adversities that often plague women throughout history. Chipman allows us to contemplate in a more resting fashion these Inner Voices and how the body/mind/spirit connection unites us.

As an interdisciplinary artist, Pamela Chipman draws on the present day cultural experiences of women grappling with sexism and gender inequality. She studied video and photography at UCLA and moved to Portland, Oregon in the late 1980s. Her work has screened across the country in film festivals, galleries, and on community television, and is held in private collections. Throughout her career, Chipman has explored the potential of the video medium through a variety of projects ranging from video-poetry, live television, installations, and documentary projects. She continues to explore new methods of integrating media into our visual world using installation, video books, and public art as tools to reach a broad artistic audience and to activate a sense of fellowship and communita