An Exhibition by William Doan, Michael Green, and Emily Steinberg

Artwork above by Emily Steinberg

 

Borland Project Space | 125 Borland Building, Penn State University Park
January 12 – March 2, 2022 | 9 a.m. – 4 p.m. Monday through Friday
Masked Exhibition Artists’ Talk: https://bit.ly/3suSHDK
February 25 from 4 – 5 p.m.

How and when did you conceive of the Masked Exhibition and how did it all come together?

Emily Steinberg: During the Pandemic Year of 2021, Bill, Michael and I were zooming on a regular basis. We did this to stay creatively and socially connected during the time of lockdown and isolation. We spoke about a lot of things during this time, and one of them… was collaborating on an exhibition together around the idea of masking. What is masking? What has our experience been like during the lockdown. What are the issues of identity and presentation around masking. What are the historical and art historical precedents of masking. Picasso’s Demoiselles D’Avignon, 1907, comes to mind.

William Doan: I think it was during a catch-up zoom early in 2021 and we were chatting about possible collaborations. We discovered that we were all interested in masks/masking for a variety of reasons. Emily was already making work about masking, Michael’s take as a physician was interesting and personal, and I have always been fascinated by “masking” writ large as a theatre artist. We started sharing work and Michael investigated the possibility of showing the work at Hershey Medical and we were off and running.

Michael Green: As Emily and Bill said, we had been zooming for a while to stay connected, and during one of our brainstorming sessions, we decided to explore the theme of masking as something that was on everyone’s mind, but that probably meant something different to each person. Since each of us comes from different backgrounds, we thought it would be fruitful to respond to this simple prompt in our own way, and the exhibit evolved from there.

Artwork above by Emily Steinberg

 

What surprised you and/or what did you learn when you were creating the work for this exhibition?

Emily Steinberg: I loved the idea of blowing up drawings and printing them on vinyl.

William Doan: What surprised me was how differently we all thought about masking, yet our mutual interest in graphic medicine, comics, graphic narrative seemed to tie it all together. I learned that I’m really inspired by Emily and Michael’s work and want to keep finding ways to collaborate with them.

Michael Green: I was surprised by how scale changed an image. Most of my original work was done in small and inexpensive composition notebooks, 7.5″x9.75″. Seeing these images enlarged to 4 ft x 5 ft in size changed so much about the images, in terms of impact, meaning, and the feelings they elicited. Also, seeing the various pieces juxtaposed with one another was really interesting, because each of us see differently and express our visions in unique ways.

Artwork above by Michael Green

 

How has your perception changed since you first conceived of this exhibition; what does this work mean and represent to you now?

Emily Steinberg: This work represents a specific period in time for me. A time of vast uncertainty, of fear, anxiety, of trying to figure out how to maneuver within new constraints.

William Doan: I’d say my interest and thinking around the complex notion of masking has deepened. Teaching wearing a mask, trying to perform wearing a mask, trying to conceive of mask-wearing and Covid-like pandemics being part of life from now on, weigh heavily on my mind. And those thoughts feed the continued work I’m doing in the mental health space, thoughts about masking anxiety and depression, hiding and protecting the self, and the historical power of masking.

Michael Green: Masks have taken on meaning so much greater than originally intended in the medical context. Medical professionals tended to see them in terms of public health and safety. But for so many people, these are statements about politics, identity, and affiliation. It’s strange and interesting, and also troubling in many ways.

If you were creating work for the exhibition today, what would you do differently?

Emily Steinberg: I would create a full-blown graphic narrative about the experience and present it as life size panels.

William Doan: I would love to scale up the size of the pandemic doctor masks I made and explore different ways of applying text to them.

Michael Green: I think I’d include more self-portraits with masks to see where that takes me.

Artwork above by William Doan

 

What comes to mind around this topic of masking when you think about the future?

Emily Steinberg: I don’t want to think about masks anymore, LOL.

William Doan: I keep thinking about how regular masking in public will exponentially lower the number of people who know what I look like. And how this might feed social media as the location where you try to connect the masked face you encounter out in the world with the whole face of that person …

Michael Green: I look forward to a time when a mask is just a mask and no longer a statement about one’s politics or identity. I don’t know if we’ll ever get there, but I can hope ….

View larger images and the full exhibition at Masked online: https://spark.adobe.com/page/cevVdvRawvSZr/