Facial Recognition at Jane Lombard Gallery
Curated by Barbara Pollack
Participating Artists: LuYang, Lau Wai, Azita Moradkhani, Russell Craig, Helina Metaferia, Kambui Olujimi, and Pixy Liao
March 14 – April 26, 2025
Facial Recognition at Jane Lombard Gallery is an exhibition on identity. Curated by Barbara Pollack, the show contrasts the computer-generated video art of LuYang and Lau Wai with the tactile and hand-made work of Azita Moradkhani, Russell Craig, Helina Metaferia, Kambui Olujimi, and Pixy Liao. The juxtaposition emphasizes what it means to be human and interrogates how culture and experience shape us individually.
LuYang’s and Lau Wai’s videos focus on what makes us human. Decrypted Sentient 02 by Lau Wai depicts 2 CGI women facing each other in a black liminal space, discussing their existence. They are trying to identify which one of them, if either, is real, and if one of them is the original. They also posit that, since they exist, they must have been created, and wonder about their purpose. LuYang’s video, Delusional Mandala, shows the process of scanning the artist’s face and building an artificial, genderless human body from the ground up. The video goes into depth about the nervous system and human anatomy to then show how vulnerable our bodies are. The film explains stereotactic surgery, first showing the device used for the procedure without context so that it appears to be a torture device à la a Takashi Miike horror film. Delusional Mandala goes on to explain how simply stereotactic surgery can change the brain to alter a person’s mood or personality. After this, the video plays clips of the artificially constructed bodies crumbling suddenly as if they’d been shot, reminding the viewer of their abject fragility.
The physical works shown in Facial Recognition emphasize personal identity. Culture and our reactions to it are strong influencing factors in shaping one’s internal sense of self. This is especially visible in Azita Moradkhani and Pixy Liao’s works. Moradkhani was born in Tehran, Iran, and lived under the country’s oppressive laws towards women enforced violently by Iran’s morality police. Moradkhani currently lives in the United States, where misogyny still oppresses women. Moradkhani’s delicate colored pencil illustrations of lingerie are paired with images of women’s protest and existence in public life. These images of action paired with the sensual object of lingerie disrupt the idea of women as sexual objects and shift the focus to women’s pleasure and agency. Liao’s photography is similarly disruptive of misogynistic culture in that she focuses on female pleasure and subverts gender roles in her photography. Her photos displayed in Facial Recognition all show her posing with her partner, Moro. Liao portrays herself in a position of power by placing herself physically above Moro, and establishing her agency by making direct eye contact with the camera.
Life experiences are also a major creator of Identity. Russell Craig’s work is deeply personal and pulls from his lived experience. He learned to paint while incarcerated, inspiring him to focus on justice and advocacy in his paintings. Craig’s piece in Facial Recognition, 5 Correctional Officers is a potent example of his work. The canvas is cobbled together from handbags, because of his experience painting on improvised materials in prison. The image portrayed in the painting, of the correctional officers surrounding a naked woman, was something Craig had seen in real life. Craig portrays the correctional officers as The Borg from Star Trek, one of the series’ recurring antagonists whose goal was the assimilation of all other species into their hive mind. The painting speaks to the control through intimidation and degradation that is enforced in the prison system.
Identity is complex, and Facial Recognition attempts to show the different mechanisms through which identity is created. Art is valuable because it is a nonverbal expression of human identity, thoughts, and feelings. The human hand is evident in many of the physical works in the exhibition and is further emphasized through juxtaposition with the video art that focuses on the concept of humanity and our body’s fragility. Facial Recognition asserts that while our existences are short and vulnerable, the creation and sharing of our individualities is integral to society.
