Valentina Jager: the face the mouth the back
October 6, 2018 – March 17, 2019
Artist and writer Valentina Jager’s exhibition the face the mouth the back calls attention to how desensitized people have become to seeing violent imagery in the media. Jager’s labyrinthine arrangement of large hanging colored tissue paper collages are based on gruesome imagery that appears regularly in Mexican newspapers due to violence caused by drug cartels. The abstract forms in Jager’s work are also inspired by gestures of falling in Japanese Butoh, a form of dance-theater developed in the 1950s that evokes death and rebirth. The title the face the mouth the back also references the physicality of the hanging paper work—over time, the colors faded, like faint memories of once vibrant human beings.
This exhibition was organized by the Orange County Museum of Art and curated by Cassandra Coblentz.