Kerry Tribe: Florida

Kerry Tribe is a Los Angeles-based artist whose work explores the social, collective, and often idiosyncratic ways in which we represent our understanding of existence, memory and subjectivity. Florida, Tribe's new project for Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, consists of video, sound and photographs produced while on a residency at the Atlantic Center for the Arts and during subsequent visits to several small towns in rural central Florida.

Described by the artist as "an extended meditation on an imaginary, Edenic site where people essentially go to die," the audio track is comprised of interviews Tribe conducted with elderly residents of nursing homes and retirement communities in the region. These tend toward the personal and particular (specific memories, desires, regrets) but also touch on larger philosophical topics as participants muse on the nature of paradise and death. Each voice is disembodied yet distinct; in the video the individuals are never seen. Instead, the projection features a series of meandering long takes, shot in Steadicam, of the Floridian landscape -- its lush savannas, dense jungles, and steamy swamps. Florida uses traditional documentary strategies as a point of departure, but the installation's sound and image loop independently from one another. This deliberate non-synching produces sensations of amnesia on one hand and on the other of d?j? vu.

Organized by Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions' Director/Curator Irene Tsatsos, Florida is Kerry Tribe's first solo exhibition in Los Angeles. Her work has been included in exhibitions and festivals internationally, including at The New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York, Bodybuilder & Sportsman Gallery in Chicago, The Project in Los Angeles, two Impakt Festivals in Utrecht, and The Sydney Film Festival. Tribe received her MFA from UCLA in 2002, was a Whitney Independent Study Program Fellow in 1997-98, and received her BA from Brown University in 1997.

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Kerry Tribe: Florida