Boundaries
by Anne Kesler Shields
Living in a highly visual society, we are all constantly exposed to a huge variety of images through television, magazine and internet ads, billboard signs, book illustrations, newspaper photos, and so much more. Images can say much about our culture, but at times, it may seem difficult to make sense of all this visual clutter. To make a statement, images must be thoughtfully combined and intellectually juxtaposed. Anne Kesler Shields’ installation accomplishes this in her large-scale photographic murals, Boundaries.
The images in Boundaries focus on the concept of both physical and psychological walls. The artist conspicuously places photographs of all sorts of walls throughout the installation: there are urban walls, rural walls, ancient walls, and even walls made of prison bars. What all these walls have in common is their purpose to serve as dividers, as boundaries, as tools to keep others out and to imprison people within. These walls allude to other kinds of boundaries, such as those of geography, language, politics, gender, and religion. These are factors that create psychological boundaries between groups of people: boundaries that can serve as dividers that are just as concrete as any physical structure.
To add another layer of meaning, the artist positions famous works of art within the visual mix. The use of beautiful art from other cultures helps the viewer’s eye cross these psychological walls for a moment. In looking at the golden glitter of an Egyptian funerary mask, the disturbing grace of an Italian Renaissance image of the martyred St. Sebastian, or the jewel-like tones of a Middle Eastern manuscript, the viewer realizes that all cultures are deep and multi-faceted. Seeing the beauty and complexity of an unfamiliar culture’s artistic achievements can remind us all how little we know and understand about that culture.
The dialogue of walls in Shields’ Boundaries shows how viewers mentally consume pictures, categorizing them as familiar images or alien ones.
Somewhere along the way, we realize that we have all engineered walls within our own minds, just as Shields has imprinted walls on the gallery surface. Viewing Shields’ installation helps us to become aware of these divisions and contemplate their meanings in the world today.
Anne Kesler Shields earned an MFA from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro in 1959. Her impressive exhibition history includes solo and group shows held in New York, Virginia, and North Carolina, including recent shows at the Mint Museum of Craft and Design and the McColl Center for Visual Art in Charlotte, Green Hill Center for North Carolina Art in Greensboro, and Artworks Gallery in Winston-Salem.
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