“There is another world, but it is in this one,” said Surrealist poet Paul Éluard. In this exhibition, artists look to the future, imagining how we move forward from the tumultuous events of the past year. [read more]
Art in the Plague Year is an online exhibition organized by UCR ARTS: California Museum of Photography and curated by Douglas McCulloh, Nikolay Maslov, and Rita Sobreiro Souther. UCR ARTS’s programs are supported by UCR College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, the City of Riverside, Altura Credit Union, and Anheuser-Busch.
All works in this exhibition are reproduced with permission of the artists/copyright holders. Works (images, video, audio or other content) must not be used or reproduced for any purposes other than fair use without prior consent of the artists.
(b. 1946, Detroit, Michigan. Lives and works in Santa Monica, CA)
The Ghostlight Theatre Project
The “ghost light” is a theater tradition. When a theater is vacant, a single light is left burning in the darkened, silent space. In classic form, the ghost light is on stage, an exposed bulb on an elevated light stand. During the pandemic, artist Sara Jane Boyers has been visiting vacant theaters across Southern California making photographs by ghost light.
The project, however, is not about emptiness but potential. After all, an empty theater is pure possibility. Theater is a site of change. “When we are invited back in, theater will have evolved. It will invite more of us back in to all its phases—audience, creatives, actors, stagehands, stories. It will be stronger. That is what theater does. That is what we do.” And we ourselves will be changed. Theater is “where we transform,” states the artist.
