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Gesche Würfel: At the Hands of Persons Unknown
August 25 – October 14, 2018
Gallery Reception & Artist Talk: Saturday, August 25, 4-6pm
Unlike painters of the Hudson River School, who depicted forests and untamed nature to revel in the grandeur of Eden-like splendor, Gesche Würfel seeks out trees that might have witnessed mankind’s darkest acts against humanity. She describes how moving to North Carolina — a German woman with an African-American husband and their mixed race son — compelled her to face the South’s complicated history of race and lynching. Würfel soon came to view grand southern trees as persistent reminders for over 4,700 recorded lynchings, most of which targeted African American males, but at least 170 black and white females as well.
The series At the Hands of Persons Unknown combines Würfel’s concern in female lynching victims with the idea of trees as silent witnesses that remained after the mob dispersed. The stark, black-and-white photographs capture a glimpse of the horrors from the tree’s viewpoint. Emotional and raw in their abstract quality, these photographs nevertheless allow room to acknowledge and mourn this unresolved history.
Hannah Frieser
Humans and plants live symbiotically; we breathe in oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide, they do the opposite. Recent scientific research indicates that plants may hear and respond to sounds such as flowing water, chewing caterpillars, and buzzing bees. I believe the landscape witnesses and holds trauma. Here, Gesche Würfel’s evocative project, At the Hands of Persons Unknown, resonates deeply with me. It stands to reason that trees—not only called to witness but also pressed to serve as accomplices to terrorist acts of lynching—would express some energetic form of PTSD and grief. The ghostly black and white images vibrate and conjure unease. With these works, Würfel has found a poetic way to catalyze conversation around one of the horrifying histories that continues to manifest in contemporary American life.
Courtney Reid-Eaton
Exhibitions Director, Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University
At the Hands of Persons Unknown is a powerful memorial for the 170 women who were lynched in the American South between 1837 and 1965. Gesche Würfel embraces trees as silent witnesses to the horror of our past with her camera. Her hauntingly beautiful images and film underscore William Faulkner’s remark that in the South “The past is never dead. It is not even past.” Würfel preserves the memory of innocent women who were lynched by racist mobs through the majestic presence of trees.
William Ferris
Author of The South in Color: A Visual Journal
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Gesche Würfel is a contemporary photographic artist based in Chapel Hill, NC. Her background in urban planning and visual sociology informs her work, which explores the social and political implications of spatial processes by challenging notions of geography, history, race, class and gender. She is the author of Basement Sanctuaries (Schilt Publishing, 2014). Her work has been exhibited, published and awarded internationally. Most recently, she has had solo exhibitions of her Oppressive Architecture project at the Contemporary Art Museum in Raleigh, NC, and the Heavy Load-Bearing Body (Schwergewichtskörper) in Berlin. Her series What Remains of the Day was selected for the International Portfolio Showcase at the Singapore Photography Festival, and she was invited to exhibit the project at the Naiman Photo Festival in China in September 2018. Würfel is a Teaching Assistant Professor for the Department of Art and Art History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. More images from her series At the Hands of Persons Unknown may be viewed on her website www.geschewuerfel.com.
Special thanks to Canson Infinity for their support of this exhibition.
Project funding has been made possible by the Puffin Foundation Ltd. Additional support was provided by the UNC Department of Art & Art History, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and the Joy of Giving Something Foundation. We thank you for the support that has made this exhibition possible.
Thanks also to Abigail Brooks Wright, whose voice brings life to Harriet Finch’s story in At the Hands of Persons Unknown (video), 2013-2015, 2:16 minutes, included in this exhibition as a sound installation on vinyl record.
EXHIBITION SCHEDULE AND LOCATIONS
The exhibitions Re-membrance of the Remembrance by Hye-Ryoung Min and At the Hands of Persons Unknown by Gesche Würfel will be on view through October 14, 2018. CPW galleries are free & open to the public Wednesday – Sunday, 12pm – 5pm and by appointment. Please note that special hours apply during the holidays. Educational tours are available upon request. CPW is located at 59 Tinker Street, Woodstock, New York 12498.
Images: © Gesche Würfel, Untitled 11, Untitled 15, Untitled 6 and Untitled 8, from the series At the Hands of Persons Unknown, 2014-2015, archival pigment print. All photographs were printed by Light Work in Syracuse, NY, on Canson Infinity paper.
SLIDESHOW
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