design / art / etc
KENT BARRETT
Only When It's Dark Enough Can You See The Stars
An Installation by Abigail Deville
@ The Peale Museum
Soundscapes by Justin Hicks
Lighting Design by Kent Barrett
Artist Assistant Mary Olin Geiger
At the back of the second floor, DeVille offered a space for healing and solace. In this installation, The People’s Theater, a shredded tarp hanging from the ceiling let through dappled light, serving as a peaceful and optimistic foil to Black Whole’s strobe. Beneath this shade, on a small stage flanked by small pews, DeVille set up a microphone and left it on at all times. It was meant, she said, to “give everyone a voice.”
"We are hovering at the edge of an event horizon, and that our narratives about America are being stretched to the point of evisceration. The splendid black hole of history that is Only When It’s Dark Enough Can You See the Stars offers resolution by ripping apart narrow views of America, leaving DeVille’s ragged, permeable banner. And, by this immense force, a multiplicity of voices is heard. Alterity is grace."
Excerpt shown in spotlight series on Art21
