‘Kissing’ redefined
Mass MOCA finds new intent in Covid-interrupted exhibit.
The exhibition “Kissing Through a Curtain” was slated to open in mid-march at MASS MOCA— but then the museum closed for four months in response to COVID-19. By the time it reopened on July 11, the show, and its name, has acquired new dimensions and associations that its creators had never intended.
“We were all shaking our heads that the title proved to be closer to the CDC’S guidelines for intimacy than an evocative metaphor for translation,” curator Alexandra Foradas said recently.
The act of translation—across borders and between languages, cultures, individuals and artistic mediums—is the theme of the exhibition, which juxtaposes the work of 10 artists. The seed took root when Foradas was taking a German translation course as part of her graduate work at Williams College five years ago. She began musing on how meaning is shaped, and how translation acknowledges and attempts to reach across boundaries.
“We were thinking and talking a lot culturally at that time about what happens at our nation’s borders—the increasing xenophobia and isolationism on the rise worldwide,” Foradas said. “Moving across borders meant something different than it means in the time of the pandemic, when moving across borders is fraught with danger to yourself and others.”
Mounted in a gallery space at MASS MOCA that’s spacious enough for visitors to socially distance easily, “Kissing Through a Curtain” is loosely divided into various approaches to the idea of translation, Foradas explained, and offers a “sense of play alongside works that ask people to more deeply consider moments of mediated communication and contact. One of things that was important to me was to have these moments of levity.”
One of those is the installation “Double Bubble,” by North Adams artist Kim Faler. Faler approached the concept of translation by casting head-size renditions of chewed bubble gum in four very different mediums: metal, glass, wax and gypsum (a soft mineral used in plaster). The pieces hang at head height in the gallery, so visitors are at eye level with the organ-like objects.
“A lot of my work is taking something accessible that we all have a relationship to, and opening it up to something larger when we spend time with it—putting literally in front of your face something that’s been always there,” Faler said.
She experimented with casting in brass and iron—creating heavy, permanent objects that bring to mind memorials and trophies, along with their sociopolitical implications—and, at the other end of the spectrum, fragile, transparent blown-glass renderings. Playing with the different resonances within each of the hollow pieces, she added a sound element by inserting speakers into five of the sculptures that emit noises of chewing and bubble blowing, giving viewers a sense of what it would be like to get inside someone else’s head.
“Bubble gum has an innate ability to capture emotion, tension and anxiety in this very passive way,” Faler said. “It’s something that people use to quell anxiety—you take all the emotion that’s pent up and output it through a piece of gum, almost like a blind sculpture that you’re making in your mouth.” In the age of COVID, the work takes on new meanings, speaking to our heightened anxiety, the fear of contact with others’ saliva and the idea of isolating ourselves within a protective “bubble.”
Another example of translating through mediums, Justin Favela’s interpretations of José María