A Bag Full of Acorns, A Bag Full of Ashes
Long Xi Vlessing
A Bag Full of Acorns, A Bag Full of Ashes
Running April 8, 2023 to May 20, 2023.
“Photos are made meaningful through the desires they enact, the communities they create, the memories they anticipate.” - Annabella Pollen.
“To collect photographs is to collect the world.” - Susan Sontag.
A middle-aged woman worships the sun on a park bench; a young boy in isolation on a crowded beach playing with sand; three figures outside a market watch catastrophe unfold while another is unaware - each image in Long Xi Vlessing’s exhibition A Bag Full of Acorns, A Bag Full of Ashes features colourful and quiet moments of everyday life suspended in frames shaped by Vlessing’s subconscious.
Emerging from the artist’s intrigue, curiosity, restlessness, and ruminations about the politics of everyday life, Vlessing’s striking images cause the viewer to ponder the staged or candid nature of the image and consider what they say, or ask about our shared socio-political climate. The artist raises questions about the implications that arise when private moments of contemplation, uncertainty and desire make themselves present in the public realm and open themselves up to an array of entanglements that includes inquisitive photography, aesthetic discourse and the ever-pervasive politics of the times that we find ourselves situated in.
In Susan Sontag’s emblematic essay On Photography, she posits that a photograph is a tool of power and that the act of photography will always involve the imposition of the photographer’s standards onto the subject. Vlessing espouses a privileged gaze cast on the bodies that become the focal point of the image, coupled with compendious captions that attempt to define the subject’s reality through discernible emotions as interpreted by Vlessing.
At the core of this work is the concept that a satirical gaze doesn’t need to invoke a perceivable political commentary on the state of our shared milieu but can find its political nature in playful, tongue-in-cheek undertones and role reversals. It is no coincidence that some of the subjects in Vlessing’s images embody some societal privilege. By utilizing a sardonic gaze towards the construction/obstruction of these subjects’, Vlessing questions the ability of narrative to act as an objective testament to individual realities and embodiments. These images feature an apparent role reversal which positions Vlessing as the active bearer of the look and privileged subjects in the frame as the object of his gaze, presenting evidence that the power of the image is dependent on the positionality of the bearer of the look.
Vlessing ties the aesthetic fascination of everyday images to a diversity of bodies and personalities inherent to city life, his images celebrate the indulgences of city living and the ability to see oneself in another. This lighthearted nature of contriving lore for the bodies we encounter as we roam our shared locale dispels the notion of social disconnect being inherent to city life.
Although images can be read in a variety of ways and develop political association based on how they are read, it is equally essential to intermittently strip images of our general understanding of the times and the subjects and find where beauty resides. For Vlessing, the beauty resides in quotidian moments that act as symbols of transformation, anxiety, revelation, and, principally, a shared humanity.
Notes
Susan Sontag , On Photography.
Olumoroti George
Artistic Director
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**Due to unforeseen circumstances this exhibition will now open Saturday / April 8th.
About the Artist
Long Xi Vlessing (b. 2000) is a photographer, filmmaker and visual artist born and raised in Vancouver and living in Montréal. He has a Bachelor of Arts with a Specialization in Communication Studies from Concordia University. His recent work includes a photographic collaboration with New York University and Concordia University as part of the Orphan Film Symposium, and a short film, Blanket Song, which is an official selection at the Seattle Asian American Film Festival and the Vancouver Chinese Film Festival. His photographic work has entered into the online collection of the Emily Carr University of Art and Design’s library as part of the British Columbia Quarantine Qapsule.
Exhibition Pictures courtesy of Sara Faridamin. Click here to visit her Instagram page.
