TATIANA JOHNSON
Works at the threshold of photography and textile, shaping soft image-objects that respond to light, space, and the quiet drift between presence and absence.
Message- TATIANA JOHNSON
- *she/her/hers*, 2025
- Two-piece sublimation transfer of a photographic image on translucent polyester; stitched seam visible; hand-stitched to a secondary polyester support with elastic trim; installation with metal hanging rod.
- 165 x 100 x 1 cm (64.96 x 39.37 x 0.39 in)
- Inv: TX-2025-006
Titled in pronouns, *she/her/hers* (2025) treats photographic seeing as a grammar: who is named, who is addressed, who is possessed. The work de-frames photographic techné —the apparatus of exposure, reproduction, and display—along with its gendered discursive prescriptions that have historically determined what is included or excluded from an image and how an image should be experienced.
The installation is built from materials coded as intimate and infrastructural at once: a translucent polyester support textile used for women’s loungewear, suspended from a metal rod and edged with elastic trim tape associated with bra straps. Onto this scaffold, a sublimation transfer print is constructed by joining two pieces, then stitched and hand-stitched to the support. The handwork remains present but deliberately understated—less embellishment than fastening, less gesture than evidence of contact.
Against the rigid economy of the framed photograph—fixed distance, fixed orientation, “correct” saturation—*she/her/hers* offers a situated viewing. Folds interrupt legibility, drape alters the image, and translucency makes perception dependent on light and movement. Exposure here is a pun and a proposition: not a single decisive moment, but an ongoing negotiation between image, body, and the conditions that hold them.
- Subject Matter: Photographic Figuration
- Collections: *Soft Architectures*
© Tatiana Johnson.
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