a portrait, a choir, a swell

Jason Lazarus
a portrait, a choir, a swell: 2019-present, 2023
Used, debranded sound screens, 14″ x 72″ x 120” plinth
Courtesy of the artist

Throughout his career Jason Lazarus has worked to make the impalpable visible, first as a photographer, and more recently by drawing attention to real-world objects that suggest a special potency. The sound screens in a portrait, a choir, a swell are noise-canceling devices used by mental health workers to mask the conversations happening inside their offices. “In my early 40s I started to see a therapist and she had one of these sound screen devices outside the office door,” Lazarus recalls. “The function of these objects had so much symbolic value that they were the edge of something very delicate and sensitive; and what's going on inside we will never really be able to know or, more importantly, represent. If things are hard to represent themselves, what might we learn by taking something on the edge of that thing? How do we bear witness to the anxiety or trauma or reparative work that is being done, that needs to be done, that some people miss out on because they're unable to access those services?”
(DKS)

Cited:
“Jason Lazarus: Skyway 20/21 Featured Artist,” July 21, 2021, Tampa Museum of Art, youtube.com

originally trained as a photographer in the early 2000s, i see sound screens as a surrogate for a subject–mental health–that is largely unphotographable and personal, while widely public in scope and implication. when on, sitting outside closed treatment room doors, they become the edge of something, while here, on a plinth and congealed as a body, something different. the growing archive of sound screen devices, which totals 62 units, is seen here as a focused installation of 24 sound screens. the devices in this growing collection, to me, acknowledge both the ongoing conversations of those in treatment, and those not privileged to access the treatment they may desperately need. it is an active field, and a sketch for future, increasingly monumental installations that ask for imagination and solidarity for mental health treatment not as a private healthcare benefit, but as a human right. -JL 2021--
Lazarus' work is in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the High Museum in Atlanta, among others, learn more here.
Curtesy of the artist.