Being There

Bar­bara Šarić’s project, “the most beau­ti­ful” jux­ta­poses sculp­tures — arche­types of human beauty — with liv­ing, breath­ing people.

Pho­tographs by Jeff Jacob­son, poem by Marnie Andrews

Tucked in a back cor­ner on the third floor is Deana Lawson’s giant photo-mural. Lawson’s piece presents a nar­ra­tive made of appro­pri­ated images, a sort of imag­ined fam­ily album, but spread out edge to edge on a gallery wall.

The image of Lt.-Col. Malali Kakar, then the high­est rank­ing woman in the Afghan police force, res­onates deeply. Surely it is the con­trast the burqa and the hand­gun, objects so often seen together but rarely com­bined, that makes this pho­to­graph. If only that were it only so.

This pro­file of Maya Deren is the first of a series of artist mini-biographies in the lead up to Bod­ies in Trou­ble, the sum­mer 2010 pho­tog­ra­phy exhi­bi­tion at Galerie SAW Gallery.