Out of the Camera: Beyond Photography, Chapter 4: Sara Greenberger Rafferty: John Young Museum of Art, Honolulu, Hawai’I

CHAPTER FOUR: SARA GREENBERGER RAFFERTY
March 7 – April 11, 2021
Commons Gallery, University of Hawai’i at Mānoa (UHM), Art Building

March 25, 12:00-1:15 pm: Talk between Sara Greenberger Rafferty and Maika Pollack, curator of Out of the Camera: Beyond Photography (Zoom link; Meeting ID: 641 863 5286; Passcode: Manoa2021)

The Commons Gallery, University of Hawai’i at Mānoa (UHM), is pleased to present a new work by Sara Greenberger Rafferty as part of the year-long exhibition series Out of the Camera: Beyond Photography. The work will be on view March 7 through April 11, 2021.

In this new work made for the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, Untitled (Out of the Camera Chapter 4), 2021, Greenberger Rafferty creates an architectural, spatialized “photograph” by partially covering the gallery with aggregated and multiplied images. Taking the form of wallpaper, these elements overlay both the walls, and windows of the Commons Gallery creating a giant photographic sculpture that can be viewed from multiple vantage points. In its screen-like plastic materiality and installation, this exhibition interrogates technological products, embodiment, and the physicality of seemingly disembodied pictures as they traverse the digital landscape.

Out of the Camera: Beyond Photography is a year-long series of solo exhibitions in the Art Building Commons Gallery by artists who work primarily as photographers but whose practices extend well beyond traditional definitions of the medium. The artists, including Lucas Blalock, Hadi Fallahpisheh, Sara Greenberger Rafferty, and Stephanie Syjuco, have been asked to consider what in their work is explicitly un-photographic for this series. The artists will be in residence at the Department of Art & Art History, UHM, to produce their artworks, present public gallery walk-throughs and talks, and to interact with students and visitors. At the culmination of the series of exhibitions, a publication will be produced. The Out of the Camera series is made possible by a generous grant from the Laila Twigg-Smith Art Fund.

Sara Greenberger Rafferty (b. 1978, Evanston, IL) is a multi-disciplinary visual artist based in Brooklyn, NY. She earned a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) and an MFA from Columbia University. Rafferty’s solo exhibition at the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA, opens in fall 2021. Her work is in permanent collections including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; Hood Museum of Art; Museum of Modern Art, NY; RISD Museum; Yale University Art Museum; and the Carnegie Museum of Art. She was a co-founder of the artist book series North Drive Press. Before joining Pratt Institute as Associate Professor and the Director of Graduate Studies in Photography, she held teaching positions at Suffolk County Community College; City College; Columbia University; RISD; Parsons; Amherst College; and Hampshire College, where she was Associate Professor of Studio Art. Greenberger Rafferty was included in the 2014 Whitney Biennial and the 2014 Hammer Biennial in addition to group shows at the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, OR; Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, CA; and The Jewish Museum, NY; among others.

Out of the Camera: Beyond Photography is curated by Maika Pollack for Hawai’i. Maika Pollack is director and chief curator, John Young Museum of Art and University Galleries and assistant professor of curatorial studies and art history, University of Hawai’i at Mānoa.

University of Hawai’i at Mānoa’s Department of Art + Art History and College of Arts + Humanities; Hawai’i State Foundation on Culture and the Arts, through appropriations from the Legislature of the State of Hawai’i and by the National Endowment for the Arts; supported by the Laila Twigg-Smith Art Fund; Halekulani Hotel– Hospitality Sponsor for the Arts at UH Mānoa; and anonymous donors.