Nancy Davidson

Double Exposure

2002

Fantasy Underfoot, 47th Corcoran Biennial, Corcoran Museum of Art, Washington, D.C. (curated by Jonathan P. Binstock)

The Corcoran Museum of Art commissioned me to create an installation sculpture for their colonnaded entrance atrium. My piece was part of the 47th Corcoran Biennial, opening in December 2002. “Double Exposure” appears as an intense red glowing form, 20 feet high. The bottom of the piece hangs only a few feet above the viewer’s head, just out of reach. From below, it is impossible to tell whether the form is suspended or floating. The red curves of the form rise over the mezzanine railings, looming like small hills within the Museum's Beaux-Arts interior. From this vantage point Double Exposure is clearly suspended from the ceiling skylight.

Excerpt from catalog essay by Stacy Schmidt, 2002

“The space created below is defined by the looming soft form, which is lit from within and hangs only a few feet above the viewer’s head, just out of reach. The atrium walls were painted a deep shade of pink for the installation, and the permanently displayed nineteenth-century American marble busts were rearranged so that only females are featured near the hanging form. The overall effect is both strangely nurturing and oppressive. The hovering work seems evocatively womblike, an impression strengthened by the pink walls, the constricted feeling of the space, and the exposed milky-white breasts of the nearby marble busts. Warm and intimate, the balloon seems to nurture and protect the viewer through its proximity. Yet the form's bound rope removes the work from the realm of the motherly, leaving an ambiguous, if not threatening, impression. From below, it is impossible to tell whether the balloon is suspended or is actually floating.

From above, the work takes on an entirely different appearance. The red curves of the balloon rise over the railings of the mezzanine like some kind of Pepto-Bismol landscape, looming like small hills within the Museum's traditional Beaux-Arts interior. The now-obvious fact that the piece is suspended from the ceiling changes the viewer’s perception of it, perhaps replacing an interpretation of nurturing motherhood with one involving some form of bound erotica. Many possible interpretations are left open for viewers, and that is fine with Davidson. "Frankly, I believe we are all attracted to the signifiers of our shared bodies. Excess attracts and repulses, invoking and thwarting fetishized desire."