Suzanne Silver

Part of an ongoing video project, Silver’s Vanishing Acts—supported by the center’s Film/Video Studio—began in March 2020 as a kind of visual diary during the peak of pandemic isolation. In a daily ritual, the artist followed the light of the sun as it moved through the rooms of her home, capturing what she calls “ephemeral, fugitive snapshots” with a cell phone camera. Using the same basic materials and techniques that are found in her paintings and drawings—painted vinyl, punctured metal, and stencil letters—Silver created images of light and shadow that are both intimate and short lived.

Woven through Vanishing Acts are themes of impermanence, loss, memory, fragility, and resistance. Words and letters appear and disappear, such as the sorrowful phrases “I was here but disappear” and “For a long time I used to dream.” Just as often, the words and letters are treated more playfully in palindromes, anagrams, and puns, like puzzles to be solved. Rendered in light that passes through punctured aluminum, china marker on clear vinyl, and other materials, they become fleeting shadows that constantly shift in and out of legibility.

Echoing the transient nature of the images onscreen, an arrangement of objects—similar to those seen in the video—is mounted in The Box and illuminated by a light that casts shadows. The installation also includes original music by LA-based composer Sivan Silver-Swartz featuring percussion by Ben Rempel and winds by Adam Hirsch. The score runs unsynchronized alongside the video, building its own evolving relationship with the images onscreen and the shadows, light, and objects in space.

Suzanne Silver
Vanishing Acts (2022)
Looped video, sound, light, painted vinyl, metal, and string
Dimensions variable

Music by Sivan Silver-Swartz
Adam Hirsch, winds
Ben Rempel, percussion