UPCOMING EXHIBITION

One Must Not Look at Anything

Rachel Stern

Baxter St is proud to present One Must Not Look at Anything, a solo exhibition of new photographs by Rachel Stern Curated by Dr. Ksenia M. Soboleva, Baxter St’s 2022 Guest Curatorial Open Call Recipient.

“Rachel Stern’s art is one of translation. In a moment of earnest heartbreak, the artist found herself (re)turning to Oscar Wilde’s 1891 Salome, a play centered around the destructive potential of unrequited desire. As a self-identified fat person moving through a fatphobic world, Stern has often felt excluded from the experience of desirability. Continuing her studio practice of creating elaborate sets to stage her photographs, the artist spelled out Salome’s line in letters cut from hand marbled paper, and attached the letters to a sheet of plexiglass placed between the camera and her lavish set. She then posed behind this veil of language, becoming both the desiring subject and the object of desire, both the looker and the one being looked at. And so began the photographic series One Must Not Look at Anything (2022-2023), each photograph borrowing a line from Wilde’s Salome and pairing it with a sitter and a set. Wilde notably wrote the play in French, in an attempt to avoid British censorship. Though many felt the play to be “untranslatable,” the most popular translation into English was done by the poet’s infamous lover, Lord Alfred Douglas. Performed on stage only once during Wilde’s lifetime, when he was already imprisoned for sodomy, the one-act tragedy also proved challenging to translate into theatrical performance. Consisting of fifteen characters that deliver longwinded monologues on stage, Salome resulted in a static play that left audiences unfulfilled. The threads of translation between content, language, and performance did not seamlessly coalesce into a satisfactory synthesis. Stern’s photographs offer a translation of Wilde’s play into visual language, meditating on the field of vision as both one of desire and of danger.” – Dr. Ksenia M. Soboleva

Support for Baxter St’s Guest Curatorial Program is provided by the Phillip and Edith Leonian Foundation.