Iris Wu 吴靖昕 Recalls the Last Few Years
Brian Kelley, 2021
How do you save your memories? How do you remember not just the major plot points of your life but the subjective emotions that are part of quiet moments? What did it feel like when you last traveled or that time your girlfriend gave you a haircut? These types of memories can be fuzzy. You might recall them differently over time, and they might continue to change as you focus on different details from that moment. Iris Wu makes photography about these dynamics within memory.
Iris Wu 吴靖昕, Untitled(on the tree), 2020, Archival pigment print, 10 × 8 in, 25.4 × 20.3 cm, Editions 1-9 of 9 + 1AP. BROWSE VIEWING ROOM
Iris Wu 吴靖昕, Untitled(banana drip), 2020, Archival pigment print, 24 × 20 in, 61 × 50.8 cm, Editions 1-3 of 3 + 1AP
Still photographs are a partial record of moments in time. For all they can tell a viewer, everything beyond the frame is left to the imagination. Immediately before or after this moment, we are left to construct or remember the rest of a narrative. The mood of that moment is as much in the photograph as it is in how the viewer chooses to understand the image. Wu’s “Untitled(banana drip)” (2020, archival pigment print) shows us a woman with pink hair behind an open car door with a fresh banana peel hanging from the frame on a sunny day along with a mountain range. Did the woman with pink hair eat that banana? Was it Wu? Are they traveling somewhere remote enough that not only is there no easy place to stop to sit down to eat food, but that there is a momentary quandary about how to dispose of the peel? Was that alpine remoteness exciting? Was it also a memory of still being a bit hungry? This moment could be a synecdoche of a whole trip, and the trigger to the memory begins with the small bit of bleached yellow perfectly centered in the frame.
Iris Wu 吴靖昕, Untitled(mask), 2019, Gelatin Silver Print, 14 × 11 in, 35.6 × 27.9 cm, Editions 1-5 of 5 + 1AP
As much as Wu reveals her life to us, she also conceals. Faces, such as that woman with the pink hair, are often obscured. In “Untitled(mask)” (2019, gelatin silver print), we have layers of concealment. First, a face mask is held up over the face of a woman in a towel by a second woman who is behind the first. Each layer obscures the one behind, and even as the mask faces the viewer’s gaze directly, there is no eye contact. The mask is exactly too high for the eye holes to reveal the gaze of the woman behind.
Iris Wu 吴靖昕, Untitled(dc, 2020), 2020, Archival pigment print, 20 × 16 in, 50.8 × 40.6 cm, Editions 1-5 of 5 + 1AP
Iris Wu 吴靖昕, Untitled(at beauchamp point), 2019, Gelatin Silver Print, 14 × 11 in, 35.6 × 27.9 cm, Editions 1-5 of 5 + 1AP
This photograph with the mask is part of Wu’s “in the calm of your arms” series, which documents her romantic relationship. We see her partner clearly in some photographs, like in “Untitled(dc, 2020)” (2020, archival pigment print) or “Untitled(at beauchamp point)” (2019, gelatin silver print). She has light skin and long, blonde hair, and a sense of being unguarded with the camera, unlike Wu.
Iris Wu 吴靖昕, Untitled(hug), 2019, 2019, Gelatin Silver Print, 14 × 11 in, 35.6 × 27.9 cm, Editions 1-5 of 5 + 1AP
Iris Wu 吴靖昕, Untitled(blanket), 2019, Gelatin Silver Print, 11 × 14 in, 27.9 x 35.6 cm, Editions 1-5 of 5 + 1AP
Sometimes we only see the body of the woman with the blonde hair, clothed or unclothed, because she is either posed so that she faces away from us as in “Untitled(hug)” (2019, gelatin silver print) or because Wu has cropped her head out as in “Untitled(blanket)” (2019, gelatin silver print).
This documentation of Wu’s relationship in the series is not a delineated story. It isn't easy to know which images come from the start of the relationship and which come from the end, even when we know the general dates of the photographs. In her exhibit at Linda Matney Gallery, “Echo Fragments,” these photographs and others are hung at various heights and printed at various sizes. Framed works hang next to unframed pieces in a way that keeps the photographs in a state of flux. The narrative of the relationship is as much between the arrangement of photographs on the wall as it is in individual works. In this larger narrative, there is a sense of caution, courage, a few minor cuts and bruises, and many moments of quiet intimacy. It is an honest but not overly sentimental attempt to see a romantic relationship for what it was with the benefit of hindsight. Many people have had this remembering in their own lives, though not in a way that they can easily share with others.
Iris Wu 吴靖昕, Untitled(our heads), 2021, Archival pigment print, 40 × 32 in, 101.6 × 81.3 cm, Editions 2-3 of 3 + 1AP
Wu distances herself from us in these photographs, though. Her most common approach is to repeat this technique of either facing away from the camera or cropping her own head from the frame. In “Untitled(our heads)” (2021, archival pigment print), we see Wu and a partner in a close embrace, but as the camera is directly above the hair on their heads, their faces are once again withheld from the viewer. In artist statements, Wu has said that this concealment is because she has not revealed her sexuality to her conservative family. This aspect of her work, the want to process her relationship and preserve its memory, is in tension with the need to obscure. The artist here extracts the core of a memory from extraneous and possibly precarious information.
Iris Wu 吴靖昕, Untitled(scratch), 2020, Gelatin Silver Print, 24 × 20 in, 61 × 50.8 cm, Editions 1-5 of 5 + 1AP
The photographs often slow the temporary and ephemeral to make it lasting and permanent. An accidental cat scratch on her partner becomes something almost monumental in one of her larger pieces, “Untitled(scratch)” (2020, gelatin silver print, framed, 24” x 20”). The work is strongly symmetrical, with the vertical cut above the sternum centered just like that banana peel. Wu crops the figure so that the face extends beyond the top edge and exposed breasts cut below the bottom. About two-thirds of the whole composition is the low relief of the upper chest, with light raking from the side. The partner extends her head back, a vulnerable pose especially considering how close the scratch came to the neck, but Wu then collapses the space so that nothing but the scratch itself is truly exposed to the viewer. Soon enough, cuts like this heal. It may already have disappeared completely outside of this photograph or memory.
These are not your memories, though your own might only differ by a few degrees. Wu shares her intimate moments with us in a manner that allows associations and perceptions to stay open and alive.
Picture at the top of this article: Iris Wu 吴靖昕, Untitled(on the tree), 2020, Archival pigment print, 10 × 8 in, 25.4 × 20.3 cm, Editions 1-9 of 9 + 1AP
