ARLES 2022: Sandra Brewster: Blur
Installation view, Sandra Brewster: Blur, July 4 - September 25, 2022 at Mécanique Générale, Les Rencontres d"Arles. Work shown: Blur 5 Wall, photo-based gel transfer on wall. Photo: Aurore Valade/ Rencontres d’Arles 2022
Written by Nikkala Kovacevic
Copy Edited by Janeen Mathisen
Photo Edited by Yanting Chen
Sandra Brewster’s Blur visualizes the migrant experience. Her series of portraits, which range from small photographs to large series, stem from her extensive work with gel transfers. Her images are intentionally blurred, cracked, and distorted: these alterations depict the shifting and mutilation of identity that can occur as a part of the Black and migrant experiences. Blur is currently displayed at Les Rencontres de la Photographie at Arles.
Installation view, Sandra Brewster: Blur, July 4 - September 25, 2022 at Mécanique Générale, Les Rencontres d"Arles. Work shown: Blur 5 Wall, photo-based gel transfer on wall. Photo: Aurore Valade/ Rencontres d’Arles 2022
Sandra Brewster. Untitled (Blur), 2017-2019. Photo-based gel transfer on wall. Courtesy Sandra Brewster / Art Gallery of Ontario.
While Brewster experimented with this style of gel transfers early on in her work, it didn’t materialize into Blur until her time as an intern in Chicago in 2016. As she became aware of the heated political climate of the time—specifically in regard to police brutality against Black individuals—Brewster began creating portraits that reflected this marginality. “Black communities were feeling frustrated, ignored and dismissed.” Brewster remarked in an interview with Canadian Art. “The Blur series, for those who saw it, expressed this feeling of being erased and ignored.”
Installation image of Blur Wall Install from the exhibition It’s all a blur…, Georgia Scherman Projects, May 5 to June 10, 2017, photo-based gel transfer, 8 feet hight.
Within this practice Brewster also found a method of expressing her personal connection to identity. Her parents had migrated from British Guyana to Canada, so Brewster created this series as a depiction of shifting identity. Reminiscent of old family photographs, Brewster’s moving and breaking figures hold generations of history and passing time.
Blur (Grid), 2017-19, Installation of 96 pieces, 172 x 14 inches (10x7 inches each), photo-based gel transfers on archival paper
This sentiment is imbued in the practice of creating the pieces themselves. Brewster initially captures her subjects in movement, using a slow shutter speed to record their range of motion. Then, she expands the photographs and prints them onto various backdrops using gel transfer. This practice is often an imperfect one, which Brewster consciously appreciates. The transfer tends to leave cracks and folds in the final piece, so they appear worn and weathered compared to the original. Through this manual process, no two prints are ever exactly the same—each carry the imperfections of their manual transfer.
Brewster often displays the same portrait multiple times—repeatedly transferred next to one another—to create a sense of movement and change reminiscent of migration. “The intention of the blur is also to represent individuals as layered and complex: to not see people solely in one dimension; [and to be] aware that a person is made up of [both] who they are tangibly, and so many other intangible things, which includes their experiences with time and location—whether they access this on their own or through generational storytelling,” says Brewster.
Josephine Baker, 1/3, 2021, photo-based transfer on archival paper, 42x36in.
This expression of generational identity also represents a reclamation of storytelling to Brewster. Instead of being confined to a societal narrative, her portraits offer movement and complexity, as well as the ability to obscure. Her works are not simply an exposure of identity but a revelation of complexity, displaying the beauty of individuals who have shifted and changed but continue to persevere over generations. In Brewster’s words, “There is power in that, in being able to conceal parts of who we are.”
