Sylke Rene Meyer
Narcissus’ Camera, 2025
Mixed media
“Narcissus Camera” presents an installation drawing from the dual meaning of “camera”— as a photographic apparatus and as a room or chamber (from the Latin “camera,” meaning “vaulted room”). This linguistic duality creates a conceptual framework through which to explore issues of identity, representation, history, and technological mediation.
In its first iteration, the installation transforms the apartment-gallery space at 35 Bowen #2 in Providence, Rhode Island into a multifaceted camera/chamber. 35 Bowen #2 has been used by RISD art students as a gallery space for decades. Their visible and hidden traces make the space an art-historical site. I specifically sought a dialogue with Francesca Woodman, a RISD graduate known for her haunting self-portraits exploring female identity and the body’s relationship to architectural spaces, “Narcissus Camera” establishes a feminist dialogue about embodiment, visibility, and the gendered aspects of being both behind and in front of the camera.
The current (2025) gallery iteration “Should We?” is led by Rafe DiDomenico and Billie Wynn with whom I have collaborated for the last two years in my studio and house. The installation is therefore also a form of grafting—connecting my studio-life space with Rafe’s and Billie’s gallery-life space. The entire gallery/apartment space becomes an installation with live cameras, a green screen, and several video projections/screens. Walls are partially covered with archival images. The video projections connect two fragments: “Melancholia 2025”, and “In the Playhouse.”
“In the Playhouse” is a video performance reenacting an interview that Marshall McLuhan gave Playboy Magazine in 1969 at his home in a Toronto suburb. The performers take on rotating roles of the interviewer Eric Norden, Marshall McLuhan, and his wife Christina McLuhan exploring notions of power, gender, genius, envy, and class of the 1969 constellation as much as of the 2023 group dynamics during the recording sessions.
The video installation “Melancholia 2025” responds to Dürer’s investigation of dimensional translation, particularly visible in “Melencolia I” (1514). In “Melencolia I,” the central geometric object is a truncated rhomboid or polyhedron, one of the most enigmatic elements in the engraving. Fitting into the broader theme of melancholy and intellectual frustration that pervades the entire engraving, the polyhedron has been often understood as a symbol of the limits of human understanding. This mathematical object, often interpreted as representing the frustration of intellectual pursuit, resonates with the installation’s exploration of representational challenges across different media and dimensions. My “Melancholia 2025” video installation expands the conceptual range by responding to Dürer’s investigation of dimensional translation and perspective, and aims to place the visitor inside the polyhedron. Embedded in “Melencolia 2025” I present video “reenactments” of Dürer’s “Bildnis der Mutter” (1514) – the portrait of his mother, “Das große Rasenstück” (1503) – commonly known as “The Great Piece of Turf” or “Wiesenstück”, and “Do wo der gelb fleck is und mit dem finger drawff dewt do is mir we” –There, where the yellow spot is located, and where I point my finger, there it hurts”– (around 1521) – one of his self-portraits when ill.
Performers and Collaborators (in alphabetical order)
Teo von Bayer Kimberli Ipin Meyer
Rafe Domenico Angelique Motunrayo Folasade C’Dina
Kaitlyn Fiery Matthew Savitsky
Cindy Fernanda Flores Billie Wynn
