CRYSTAL Z CAMPBELL
People without fingerprints
Crystal Z Campbell, People Without Fingerprints #623, 2014
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OPENING: Saturday, 27 September 2014 – H 6.00
30 September 2014 – 30 November 2014
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Artericambi is pleased to present People Without Fingerprints, a solo exhibition of mixed-media works by Crystal Z Campbell. This is Campbell’s second solo exhibition at Galleria Artericambi.
For over a century, the fingerprint has been catalogued to classify persons of interest. Now, the fingertip has evolved into a portal between the digital and physical worlds-doubling as both an interface and “face” courtesy of biometrics. With a simple scan, fingerprints suggest a forensic narrative. The evolution of the narrative attached to fingerprints, reveals the fingerprint as a gateway to what criminology researcher Katja Aas coins the “body as a passport”.
This exhibition includes Campbell’s new works ranging from visual, sonic and material fragments of sound, 16mm film, photographs and scientific samples. Exploring various perversions of civilization lost or recorded by the fingerprint, Campbell sources an eclectic mix of social media, oral histories, memories, news articles, literature, pseudo-scientific research, archives and cultural appropriations.
People Without Fingerprints extends Campbell’s interest in art and science and deconstructing cinematic narrative through careful dissections of image and sound. Campbell’s new16mm film, screening for the first time at Galleria Artericambi, features a young boy diagnosed with autism. His mother, eager to assist him in approximating “normalcy,” enrolls the boy into a special Listening Therapy course she administers at home. Listening Therapy––known formally as Auditory Integration Training, is a sonic treatment intended to retrain one’s brain while shifting one’s attention, and has been used controversially, for the treatment of autism. A tragedy follows, leaving the audience to decipher the unspoken narrative suggested by a catalogue of forensic ephemera bearing undusted fingerprints.
At Galleria Artericambi, Campbell will share her latest film, photos and a scientifically prepared fingertip acquired through eBay. People Without Fingerprints includes fragile slivers of civilization dissected from real, mythical, technological and symbolic inheritances––a complex narrative space touched by rumor, abstraction, omission, and ritual.
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BIO
Crystal Z Campbell, a mixed-media artist of African-American, Filipino and Chinese descent, was born in Prince Georges County (Maryland) and raised in Oklahoma. Campbell investigates the politics of witnessing and is currently engaged with an ongoing art and science project investigating Henrietta Lacks’ HeLa cell within a biopolitical, ethical, and spiritual nexus.
A former social worker, Campbell completed Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture, an MA in Africana Studies (University at Albany) and an MFA at University of California-San Diego. Her works have been shared at Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) Philadelphia, Fondazione Ratti, Studio Museum of Harlem, Children’s Museum of San Diego, Project Row Houses and de Appel Arts Centre amongst others.
Campbell was Van Lier Fellow at Whitney Museum of American Art’s Independent Study Program from 2010-2011 and finished a two-year residency at the Rijksakademie van beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam, Netherlands. In 2014, Campbell will be a Sommerakademie fellow at Zentrum Paul Klee in Bern, Switzerland. Campbell lives and works in Amsterdam, Netherlands.
The works in People Without Fingerprints are made with support from Amsterdam Fonds voor de Kunst.
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