Barbara Zeigler Ritual & Change

Ritual & Change

This series of works looks closely at small daily rituals we institute: their formation, the purpose they serve as they evolve over time, and the way they may both comfort and signal the need for change. Scheduled for completion in 2017, this group of works is comprised of intaglio and digital prints, videos, and sculpture. Exploring the evolution Zeigler has noted for more than 25-years in the careful daily washing of the shells of eggs she and her family consume, the artworks contrast printed images of sequential washing gestures with moving video images of similar gestures. In a time of rapid change coupled with an increasingly precarious environmental situation, this body of work serves as a reflection on time, transformation, the role of ritual in our lives, and links aspects of daily ritual to personal and societal change.

1. Change, 61.5 x 99 cm, (24 ¼ x 39”), photo-etching on copper, 2015-16.

3. Passage, 3-channel video, 3 six-minute loops, 2014. Production Team: Barbara Zeigler, artist, and Andrew Powe, filming and editing production assistant.

Click on image to link to text and a related version of video, Passage II.

2. Daily Rituals, video, 9 minutes, looped, 2014-15. Production Team: Barbara Zeigler, artist, and Andrew Powe, filming and editing production assistant.

Click on image to access video link and related text.

Positioned in the corner of the gallery and modest in size, this work forms a wedge. The stacked eggshells serve both as an intervention into the institutional space of the gallery, and as a statement of determination regarding the necessity of transformation required in all corners to effect change. Cracking refers to a fracture that in this instance may allow for a transition from one state or stage to another, and to the cracking of glass.

Although the primary content of this work is different than corner wedge works by such artists as Joseph Bueys, and Felix Gonzalez-Torres, and other works positioned in corners by Kazimir Malevich, and Vladimir Tatlin, it does also share consideration of some thoughts these artists addressed through their work related to impermanence, vulnerability, regeneration, transformation, the role of the icon, and revolution.