What do a glasshouse, a diorama, and a camera have in common?

Of Light and Shadow is a four part thesis exhibition that took place on March 22, 2024 in the SIU Communications Building Northlight Studio. The work included installation art and performance. The makeup of Of Light and Shadow: dried plants and tea bags, manufactured specimen pins and laminated sheets, mechanical photography and text written by hand, all expose dichotomies between art and science, public and domestic, natural and artificial. By presenting these dichotomies through the juxtaposition of, for example, industrial, manufactured materials like the specimen pins and laminated sheets in opposition of the ephemeral object’s delicacy such as with the dried plant or the decaying teabag, this creates the same effect of the glasshouse, diorama or camera—a juxtaposition of the real and unreal through material objects that allow them to exist in the in-between.

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Artist Statement

Leah Sutton is a third-year Master of Fine Arts student in Interdisciplinary Media. In her work, she uses light and shadow as a duality that connects the natural and artificial. With this duality and materials manufactured and handmade, she creates environments that beckon the viewer to consider other dualities such as light and dark, inside and outside, past and present, and private and public. Coming from a background in photography, her work seeks to fragment photography as a material and immaterial mode of traditional storytelling where it constantly battles the question of “will it disappear” and “if so, when?”

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