Mary Rachel Fanning

Mary Rachel Fanning | Portfolio

Turning Our Tongues

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A collaged image of the young women featured in Turning Our Tongues

“Turning Our Tongues” is a project initiated by 6+ in collaboration with a group of 18 young women aged 16 -19 from the Deheisheh Refugee Camp, Palestine. It foregrounds different ways of journaling, of reflecting on daily life – from the very literal or informational, to the evocative and expressive.

The project developed through a series of workshops, combining the use of intimate journals (writing, sketching and so forth) and the creative interpretation of the journals through short audio works. The audio recordings began as journal entries but progressed through various stages of transformation and interpretation, to include a combination of text and sound.

 

The resulting audio works are recordings of live, choreographed performances ranging from stories and poems, to songs, and fragmented personal narratives. The young artists worked together in small group collaborations to support the performance of each narrative. This project explores the possibilities of working together to develop the power of one’s own voice.

6+: a women’s art collective would like to thank:
Naji Owdah, Haneen Owdah, Suhair Faraj Owdah, Rawan Gedeon and Joseph Farbrook

This project is partially funded by:
Creative Research Grant, University of South Florida College of Visual and Performing Arts, Pima Arts Council and generous contributions of several artists and friends.

My Last Duchess

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Vance and Mary wedding 1

Vance and Mary wedding 2

My grandparents, Vance and Marybelle, were married at a Florida army base in 1942. A year later, he dropped bombs on German factories. She set up house with her new in-laws in western Kansas and waited. Continents apart, the only modes of communication between them were letters, photographs, “Old 78’s” of their voices, and information funneled through the news, entertainment, and marketing industries. What parts stayed in? What parts were left out?

“My Last Duchess” is an audio/visual installation developed from familial, military, and commercial relics surrounding personal relationships during World War II, a period that also first defined the term “The Home Front.” By re-enacting (re-interpreting?) the communicative roles of spouses and their mediated environments, I am investigating how western structures support or deflect a time of war. I am also curious about the gaps of information people purposefully omit to “protect” one another, including myself. How do both private and public messages interact and determine what is culturally acceptable and moral?

 

DOCUMENTATION:

hisletter_post 

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Click here to listen to entire piece (21min 53 sec)

 

Appalachia

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While working for the Appalachia Service Project I was introduced to the rural mountain culture of Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia.

This series focuses on a group of people forced to the sharp edges of consumer society where they encounter economic uncertainty, a scarred landscape, the American Dream, each other, and the photographer.

*click on image to view gallery

The Trophy

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This work investigates the definitions of ‘trophy;’ as a specimen preserved as a token of a successful hunt of an animal or the pursuit of a woman, and the ultimate, desired symbol of victory.

In 2009 I commenced a project of espionage in a Deep South lake I grew up swimming in.  With a consumer, underwater surveillance camera I monitored all activity of aquatic wildlife and female swimmers. This camera was built by outdoorsmen to watch the sport of fishing below their boats.

The Trophy ebbs and flows between the quiet of a tranquil habitat and dramatic displays of “the hunt.”  The footage appears somewhat ridiculous as the grainy black and white imagery disrupts the female bodies’ physique and turns average fish into cartoonish monsters. The viewer becomes the voyeur waiting for the catch…. the fish to be ripped out of the water with the hook and line, or the female body to emerge of out of abstraction and focus into a concrete image.


Sun Valley

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The Sun Valley neighborhood is one of Denver’s most impoverished communities, yet is the most ethnic and culturally diverse place in the state of Colorado.

These collaborative environmental portraits of the children of the Sun Vally Youth Center explore their relationships with the place and the popular culture in which they live.

*click on any image for gallery

Namesake

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“I arrive at The Manor in Nashville. My cousin Jerard greets me and says, “Grandma’s gotten loose.” We find her staring into a poster–one of those flowery landscapes. She reaches up to pull my face closer to hers, gives me a kiss and smiles,

“oh, there you are!”

Jerard and I walk her back to the room where Grandpa Vance is briefly escaping into the television. Before driving them to the IHOP for dinner I carefully buckle up my 86-year old grandmother into the seat just like she buckled me in when I was 6.” –journal entry

Read more below.

*click any image for slideshow

I’ve always known my grandmother, Marybelle Archer, as never missing an accessory, friendly enough to make conversation with complete strangers, and always happy; as evidenced by smiling in her sleep. My mother gave me part of her name.

8 years ago I saw a new quality in Grandma.  She was the one who sometimes forgot our names.  During a hospital visit for an abnormal heartbeat Grandma said to the nurse, “Me and Vancie…we’re a mind a half.”  This simple expression marked for me the disease my family knew had already arrived.

As Grandma grew into dementia she and my grandfather made the move onto the Assisted Living Floor.  Then the Ambulatory Floor, the Non-Ambulatory Floor, and last June she left us.

Behind the camera I am a participant in the challenges of a life-long marriage and the role-reversals between my mother and her parents. As an artist these changes are fascinating…as a granddaughter they are awkward and hard to accept.  The roles of ‘photographer’ and ‘granddaughter’ go back and forth; as well as ‘caretaker,’ ‘participant,’ and ‘viewer.’

Grandma and I perform.  In some images my hand reaches out from behind the camera, or we compare our bodies side-by-side.  We collaborate.  We do each others’ eyebrows. Our relationship unravels in some areas and grows in others.

Through photographing of my grandmother I relate to the difficulties and the messy choices spouses, children, and grandchildren have to make in coping with degenerative diseases.  My family has tackled these changes sometimes clumsily, sometimes gracefully. My challenge is to find the visual spots of dignity and lightness in a natural process perceived by most as painful and morose.  Then I  see what parts of her besides her name are still a part of me, and hold those parts in these photographs.