Fiat Lux
14 VIDEO VIGNETTES & WEBSITE | MFA Thesis Project
Hallelujah, I’ve seen the light.
The soul, knowledge, truth, the divine, warmth, goodness— light is a metonym of power. As creatures of the 21st century, when illumination is just a switch flip away, the sense of enchantment is difficult to maintain. How does belief in light, in any of its metaphoric iterations, continue in the face of disillusionment? Can reverence and modern skepticism coexist? What began as a lighting project turned into a meditation on illumination. It took the form of fourteen short video vignettes, housed in a website. A visitor to the site is greeted with the text seen at left; clicking replaces it with the site’s title, Fiat Lux. Scrolling reveals each successive video, playing in a loop. Each starts from darkness. Light pools into the inky blackness as the figure plugs the studio lights into extension cords. The scene comes into view, light by light. The cords are part of the composition—there is no effort to hide the anachronistic tangle that hints at the light sources off camera. A wink at the illusory nature of studio composition. Practicals—on camera light sources, both artificial and natural—also play a key role.
Hallelujah, I’ve seen the light.
The soul, knowledge, truth, the divine, warmth, goodness— light is a metonym of power. As creatures of the 21st century, when illumination is just a switch flip away, the sense of enchantment is difficult to maintain. How does belief in light, in any of its metaphoric iterations, continue in the face of disillusionment? Can reverence and modern skepticism coexist? What began as a lighting project turned into a meditation on illumination. It took the form of fourteen short video vignettes, housed in a website. A visitor to the site is greeted with the text seen at left; clicking replaces it with the site’s title, Fiat Lux. Scrolling reveals each successive video, playing in a loop. Each starts from darkness. Light pools into the inky blackness as the figure plugs the studio lights into extension cords. The scene comes into view, light by light. The cords are part of the composition—there is no effort to hide the anachronistic tangle that hints at the light sources off camera. A wink at the illusory nature of studio composition. Practicals—on camera light sources, both artificial and natural—also play a key role.
This work’s title comes from the beginning of Genesis (fiat lux translates to let there be light), while the compositions are references to artworks found in the Western art-historical canon (de La Tour’s Penitent Magdalen, Vermeer’s The Milkmaid, Bronzino’s Portrait of a Young Man, Ingres’ The Virgin Adoring the Host, Zurbarán’s Still Life, Caravaggio’s The Incredulity of St. Thomas, Millais’Lost Piece of Silver, Zurbarán’s St. Francis in Meditation, van Eyck’s The Arnolfini Portrait, Heda’s Still Life with Glasses and Tobacco, Ingres’ Portrait of the Princesse de Broglie, Ingres’ The Small Bather, Cotán’s Still Life, Copley’s Paul Revere.) The references provided compositional cues, which I then recreated with materials I had on hand. These were frequently and purposefully ahistorical—trash bags became ball gown skirts, REI rain pants adorned arms as ballooning sleeves, paper bags formed monk’s hoods. Forms reshaped by hand and light, these materials were transformed into images that were neither too earnestly historical nor jarringly contemporary. Listing the materials under the title was a way to quietly clue the viewer into these small moves that might not be visible on first glance.