Camille Johnson
Time Based Visual Art
I moved to New York City by myself when I was seventeen.
This piece is a self portrait. This piece is a landscape.
It is this city’s record of my personal landscape and
It is my record of this cityscape.
It is a record of how those landscapes have met and
How they penetrate.
A self-portrait is to take note of an exchange
Between you and your context.
It is a single interpretation.
With each contact you make within and beyond
The boundaries of your skin,
A hybridization.
And there is residue.
This self-portrait is the residue.
When I draw with charcoal,
I am drawing on the canvas but the canvas is drawing on me too.
I am covered in residue and I can’t help it.
Only the canvas will hang on the walls as “the piece”
But I am the piece too because
There was a contact,
A hybridization,
And there was so much residue.
This piece attempts to make that residual-ity of a self-portrait
And a landscape explicit.
This project will be up through the month of August. Camille has returned to New York City to continue working her craft. Thank you to Bob Walma for his images of her project.
One reply on “Artist moved to NYC at 17“
Comments are closed.