The two artists in The Ties That Bind embrace the ambiguity of identity and relationships in extraordinary photographic works that evoke very simple visual pleasures. Carrie Schneider’s Derelict Self portrays the artist in stagings, performing as double to a similarly styled male figure—at a cafeteria, in a grocery store etc. The sum effect negates the genders of the individuals into a single androgyne, but it is a relationship between a singular self in dispute. Even in the vulnerable, naked moments of Untitled (Tub) there is a palatable isolation, an aloneness. Spencer Murphy’s Relative, a series of blended-family photographs, seemingly operates from documentary’s authentic place—yet the photographs’ formal construction hints that the artist knows truth is more slippery, especially when it comes to family relationships. Schneider’s work presents a literalized mirror stage of development. Murphy’s is a new acceptance of relations achievable only through the distance of age, of growing older. They are two completely different ways, yet both arrive at the same dotting of the “i” in identity.
Carrie Schneider (b. 1979, Chicago; lives Chicago and Helsinki) earned her Master of Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2007. Upon graduating, Carrie attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, and is currently on a Fulbright Fellowship to Kuvataideakatemia, the Academy of Fine Arts, in Helsinki, Finland. Recent and upcoming exhibitions include the Third Azerbaijan Biennial in Baku, Helsinki’s Taidehalle Kunsthalle, and Monique Meloche Gallery, Chicago.
Spencer Murphy was born in 1978 and grew up in the Kentish countryside of England. Since completing his degree in Falmouth, Cornwall (UK) in 2002 – during which time the projectRelativewas conceived – Spencer has since spent several years living in London, first working as a photographer’s assistant and then setting up on his own, all the while continuing his personal projects. He has since contributed to many magazines, exhibited worldwide and received awards for his work. He now also works as a visiting lecturer at Universities in the UK.
