VUES/VIEWS

ABOUT THE INSTALLATION

AMIE SIEGEL
BORN 1974, CHICAGO, ILLINOIS; ACTIVE BROOKLYN, NEW YORK

Amie Siegel works in film, photography and sculpture, investigating value, cultural ownership, and image making. Her double-sided work Vues/Views, comprised of a film and work on paper, is a critical consideration of the role of 19th-century French panoramic wallpapers animating interiors in the United States to this day. These proto-cinematic, handblocked papers frame the interior as exterior, unfolding views of distant places, mythologies, and histories in sequential horizontal tableaux. They also allow the viewer’s gaze to travel without leaving the room, creating a voyeuristic expedition of sorts, replete with issues of exoticization and otherness, domination and control. Vues/Views traces such “panoramic papers,” many of which are still produced today, in homes across the United States, including Les vues d’Amérique du Nord (Views of North America, 1834) by French wallpaper manufacturer Zuber: a pastiche of imagined scenes of pre–Civil War life, as the nascent republic evolved from colony to colonial power. In Siegel’s film, the wallpapers and their locations become a prism through which scenes of power, privilege, race, and class refract and converge, asking us to consider continuities between this country’s past and present. Collaborations with a range of fellow artists, communities, and participants reflect on the wallpaper’s social implications, giving voice to multiple perspectives. The artist’s verso panoramic is culled from discarded scenic rolls she found at the Zuber factory in France. Siegel reframes these moments of incompletion and absence to materially manifest the erasure and distortion that occur through the representations of people, landscapes, and cultures across time.

Visual Description

Walking into this room feels like walking into an ornamented music box; appropriate for Carnegie’s former music room. This grand space is a long rectangular room with cream walls and a sloped ceiling trimmed with gilded motifs of florals, vines, and various instruments including violins, tambourines, horns, lyres, drums, and pan flutes. The north end of the room culminates in a monumental-sized mirror in a gold frame hung above the fireplace.

 This long rectangular space is divided in half by a horizontally oriented rectangular surface, bisecting the space like a tennis net in the center of a court. The rectangular surface is suspended a couple feet off the ground by wire cabling. On the north side of the room, the canvas is blank, and a film is projected onto it; a bench faces the projected images for visitors to sit and rest while watching. The movie casts a ghostly bluish glow to the darkened room.

On the south side of the rectangular surface is a mural consisting of 10 strips of wallpaper. Each strip is partially incomplete, making parts of the overall scene missing, though we can discern mountains, trees, a body of water, and groups of people in elaborate dress.

The scene is a panoramic view of white Americans walking or riding along an unpaved path. The people are richly dressed in late 19th century fashions. The path is in the foreground of the composition and runs left to right across the entire panorama. The view in the background extends to a vast landscape revealing an American militia standing at attention, a calm blue river, and a metropolis on the other side of the riverbank.  

As you move about the room, please feel free to sit on the bench and enjoy the film.

Acknowledgements

In collaboration with Davóne Tines, Alma Lee Gibbs Tines, and John Hilton Tines Sr.; Alcorn State University Sounds of Dyn-O-Mite Band; Joe Baker (Lenape, Delaware Tribe of Indians); James Coleman, Terrance Hamilton, Jua ‘Wan Lewis, Pendennis Club Friday regulars, and Dawn Heller.

Producer Andrew Fierberg. Line Producers Christian Detres, Joe Serkoch. Production Coordinator Melissa Detres. Director of Photography Michelle Marrion. Steadicam Ben Spaner. 1st Assistant Camera Dietrich Teschner, Bridgett McQuillan, and Gary Walker. Camera Production Assistant Rachel Brown and Brent Acuna. Gaffer/Key Grip Bryan Edwards. Gaffer Ted Ayd. Key Grip Elliott Snell. Dolly Grip Alex Bond. Media Manager Robert Granata. Sound Recordist Taylor Packett and Marianna LaFollette. Music Recordist Ophir Paz. Editor Amie Siegel. Sound Mix Gisburg Smialek. Post-Production Coordinator Ina Ho. Wallpaper Installation by DecoRada Alan Rada, Anthony Ali, and Marco Dávila.

Thanks to Pierre Frey, Outset Contemporary Art Fund, and Thomas Dane Gallery.