Mason Ground Control (Colorado River Delta)
Download Image: Web
The Lycoming College Art Gallery will welcome the new year with multi-disciplinary artist Noelle Mason whose work explores the temptations of power furthered by systems of visual and institutional control. Her exhibit titled “X-Ray Vision vs. Invisibility” will open Jan. 28, with a gallery talk to follow at 5:30 p.m. It will run through Saturday, Feb. 26, and is free and open to the public.
Mason’s exhibit focuses on the use of technologies to patrol international borders and capture images of undocumented immigrants. Using border patrol and border-watching vigilante website images, the project calls into question how the vision technologies recycle Cartesian modes of viewing land and body, and in so doing, reinforces a neocolonial worldview.
When asked about what the goal of the exhibit was, Mason said, “This translation highlights how subtle shifts in the medium can evoke a new emotional relationship to this imagery and questions the manner in which the surveillance medium itself serves to dehumanize the subjects of machine images.”
Mason’s work has been celebrated at the Ringling Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Benaki Museum in Athens, Greece, and at Phest International Festival of Photography in Monopi, Italy. Mason is a proud recipient of the Joan Mitchell Foundation Artist Grant, Jerome fellowship, the Florida Prize for Contemporary Art, the Southern Prize and most recently the LensCulture Art Photography Award, the PHmuseum Grant Prize, the Center Sante Fe Director’s Choice Award and the Female in Focus award from the British Journal of Photography.
As well as receiving her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Mason completed a residency at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. She is now the Associate Professor of Sculpture at the University of South Florida.
The Lycoming College Art Gallery, located in downtown Williamsport at 25 W. Fourth St., contributes to the city’s arts culture and allows the College to become more involved with the surrounding community. Lycoming art students have the opportunity to interact with visiting artists and learn first-hand the inner workings of an art gallery.
The gallery is open Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays from 4-8 p.m. For more information, please visit the gallery online at: https://www.lycoming.edu/art/gallery/20-21.aspx.