NOMA premiers the newest body of work by Josephine Sacabo (American, b. 1944). In Salutations, Sacabo combines collaged and distorted photographic images with a wet collodion on metal process that dates back to the 19th century to create a world that is barely recognizable as such, hovering like a memory or a dream in the space between the concrete and the ineffable. Throughout the work, half-materialized visions of certain elements appear and reappear—an apple, a bird, a window, the female form—as if to suggest some kind of narrative is buried under the layers of fractured representation. But the project as a whole resists any linear reading, and instead concerns itself with establishing an enigmatic set of conditions—loss, solitude, melancholy, nostalgia, etc.—that create a space for interpretation. In other words, rather than tell any particular story, these works set the stage for a number of potential stories that hinge upon these broader concepts. In balancing on the threshold between the real and the surreal, these images favor the poetic over the prosaic and the symbolic over the literal.

Sponsors / Partners

Josephine Sacabo: Salutations is generously underwritten by Donna and Benjamin M. Rosen.