Light Work Annual 2012: Calla Thompson

Untitled (sign 1), 2011, Calla Thompson

…Calla Thompson has achieved something quite remarkable in her Asylum series. With the seemingly simple, yet decidedly deliberate, decision of creating her photomontages within the tondo format, she has managed to conflate these two major aspects of pictorial configuration. The desire to bridge contradictions is not only apparent in Thompson’s formal choices but also in the title for her series as well as her subject matter. She wants “asylum” to be understood in its multiple and contradictory meanings, as a safe haven, refuge or sanctuary in a “Storm without end” on the one hand, and as an institution or place where one is held against one’s will on the other.

– Andrea Inselmann, curator

Read the rest of the essay in Contact Sheet 167: The Light Work Annual 2012.

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