I Can See Clearly Now
Aaron Peters & Lydia Smith
On view at UAS Online
I Can See Clearly Now is a collaborative installation that exists as a mix between painting, sculpture, and set. Throughout the pandemic, we built barriers and reinforced our borders. We covered our faces with cloth masks, erected plexiglass panels between desks and seats, and closed international passageways. As the vaccine becomes more available, we hear Jimmy Cliff singing: “I can see clearly now, the rain is gone. I can see all obstacles in my way.” Our barriers are not erased, but we can at least see or even walk over them. In this experimental exhibition, we layer and weave together porous materials that viewers can look through and move around in response to our current landscape.
This exhibition evolved and transformed over the course of two weeks while it was on view. Various members of the community collaborated with the installation and staged interventions in the gallery space through the practices of music, dance, lighting design, performance, film projection, and teaching. During these collaborations, the objects in the show were moved, shifted, rearranged, and built into new forms on and off the wall. Visitors to the gallery also joined in or simply witnessed these moments as they occurred in the gallery. The following documents the course of collaborations within this exhibition day by day.
Summer Series is a multi-venue program that showcases short- and long-term projects such as gallery exhibitions, performances, audience participatory work, discussions, research demos, and more. This series encourages collaboration, multidisciplinary approaches and seeks ideas that foster conversations, relationships, or careers, that represent diverse perspectives.
