Challenging traditional ideas about portraiture, Fort Point
artist Sylvie Agudelo has been engaged in a long-term project to more
accurately capture the essence of a person. Embedded in the intersection of science
and art, the fifteen-year resident of the neighborhood explains, “I’m inspired
by hybrid science-art people.” She lists Michelangelo, Lars von Trier, MatthewBarney, Vincent van Gogh, and Edgar Degas as a handful of artists whose intense
focus on art and representation continues to impact her work.
She says, “A portrait is traditionally a 2-D image with
people formally dressed, of a particular moment in time—you don’t really get a
sense of what that person is really like, what makes them special.” Hoping for
a more intimate and revealing picture, she has recently been making mixed media
portraits, or “a natural history collection.”
Photo courtesy Sylvie Agudelo
Looking at her earlier work shows that her questions about
portraiture are not new ones. From photographs of the inside of people’s
refrigerators—or as she says, “another kind of portrait”—to large-scale
photographs of people and landscape merging, her work continues to work toward
a better language for representing personality.
In 2011, Agudelo was part of a team with James McLeod who
created “Embroidered,” a public installation in Fort Point. The pair brought
together text and images from contributors in the neighborhood and these
elements were used in composing the art for installation. Silk-screened glass
panels interacted with large embroidered cut-out silhouettes and became “A
collective portrait of the neighborhood by the neighborhood.”
Installation of Embroidered, 2011
Another example of her inventive take on portraiture is the working piece that was included in a City Hall new media show in 2011. “Using 3rd party / government / institutional portraiture, the picture questions how the government sees us,” Agudelo says. “Is it a more accurate portrait because the machines have no relationship with you—because you aren't posing for posterity?”
This idea of data collection and exploration has emerged
countless times in Agudelo’s career. She says, “I’m trying to figure out the
algorithm of what makes us who we are,” which is precisely where science and
art, and the artist’s reverence for these oftentimes competing elements, unites
in her work. Describing this recent series as “Investigations into what is an
accurate portrait,” the overriding question, “what do you really know about a
person?” attempts to be answered by collecting and presenting elements of their
personality. Rather than the stale trappings of portraiture, Agudelo’s work
seeks alternate measures.
Image of Third Party Identity Project, Sylvie
Agudelo
“When someone close to you dies,” she says, “you may choose
to save a t-shirt, letters— things sentimental and intimate.” Likewise, her new
pictures “involve the biology of the person. I’m trying to combine that with
those other unguarded moments.”
The connections to artists like Van Gogh and Degas are clear,
as they sought to present a different sort of truth in portraiture as well. In
Degas’ case, these revealing and harsh, often unguarded and disquieting images
represented a wholly unique method of capturing the essence of the emerging
middle class. Often enabled by his study and use of photography, he no longer
presented an idealized version of people—as his pictures sought a truer
depiction of life than portraiture had allowed prior to his moment. And with
Van Gogh, his drawings and paintings depict an emotion so separate from the traditional
mask of portraiture, he often rendered the subject’s face completely obscured.
Edgar Degas, Bellelli Family Portrait, courtesy
Wikipedia
Continuing in the tradition started by the Impressionists,
Sylvie uses alternate means for creating a representative identity in her
portraits. In this regard, the scientific approach can be seen throughout her
work. “Observe, collect data, make hypotheses,” is here, and the former field
biologist who once lived and worked in Woods Hole says “I really want to know
what makes anything tick—I can’t help it.”
Sorrow, and Old Man in Sorrow, both by Vincent van
Gogh.
Part of her current project includes capturing portrait
subjects in their natural environment using video and still photography. Below
is one of these stills from a video of Agudelo and fellow artist PaulLaffoley during a typical Sunday lunch. The project uses natural light and a
true environment for a greater sense of person and place. She says, “I see portraiture
as an extension of observing animals—some form of being a naturalist—from
scientific collection.”
Video Still, courtesy Sylvie Agudelo
While she says, “In math, in machines, in systems you string
together, you can count on X + Y = Z. But with people… you get…”
And clearly these explorations only serve to provide another
set of questions for the artist to answer with art. But despite their
foundations in science, these works are steeped in emotion. “Maybe it’s a big part of living in the city—but
I feel we are farther and farther away from one another,” she says. Even so, Agudelo’s
pictures bring us closer.
About the Author: Kurt Cole Eidsvig is an artist and poet who lives and works in Fort Point. To learn more about Eidsvig visit http://www.kurtcoleeidsvig.com/
About the Author: Kurt Cole Eidsvig is an artist and poet who lives and works in Fort Point. To learn more about Eidsvig visit http://www.kurtcoleeidsvig.com/
