Susan Hobbs

Althea Thauberger's work results from her interactions with groups sitting on unexpected cultural or social margins. Each project is developed through negotiation between the artist and her "co-creators', and the works that result are unsettling yet honest social documents that often paradoxically are achieved through play or contrivance.

For this exhibition, Thauberger continues her unconventional ethnographic research with two projects of distinct origins. Though deliberately open ended, both present the human body as unabashed instruments for self-expression that also interrogate cross-cultural implications in their representations of the same. The first is a large photo mural produced following a recent trip to Indian-administered Kashmir. There, Thauberger visited a theatre troupe in the village of Akingam that practice a traditional form called Bhand Pather. Thauberger photographed a re-staged version of the group's production of King Lear, a Kashmiri version derived from a Hindi translation that was developed and produced by the renowned Delhi-based theatre director M.K. Raina. Together with the actors, Thauberger configured the various scenes of the play into a synchronous tableau for the camera. On the second floor, Thauberger will present a suite of prints of a 1930s nudist colony that the artist printed from a recently discovered series of decayed glass negatives. Printed as they were found, without modifications, each photograph depicts the inhabitants of the colony subtly performing their leisure in a variety of natural settings, and provides remarkable evidence of an aspiring social utopia.