From Within: Dark Monks, 2022
Ceramic, photograph, brass peephole
Wendt's From Within ceramic series, is based on Egyptian canopic jars and Stanhope viewers. Inspired by the isolation of the recent pandemic, each of the fourteen jars all contain a group portrait of the other 13 jars, the idea being that we carry those whom we are connected to inside of us. Like Walt Whitman’s “I contain multitudes,” this project incorporates the idea of inherited memory which has been the foundation of several recent projects of hers. Here, the internal images can only be seen when you lift the head or lid and let the light in.
ALYSSA TAYLOR WENDT is a multidisciplinary artist, filmmaker and curator working in Austin and Detroit. Her recent projects reference ritual, inherited memory, hidden strata of history, and the death cycle of architecture using video, sculpture, photography, and performance. Earning her MFA from Bard, she has shown internationally since 2004: the FRONT Triennial, Ohio (2022), Women and Their Work, Austin (2015); Co-Lab Projects, Austin (2012, 2010); Vox Populi, Philadelphia (2011); TSA, Los Angeles (2018); Third Man Records, Detroit (2016); New Museum, NY (2011); Miami Art Basel (2008); Museum of Art and Design, NY (2013), Deitch Projects, NY (2005) and Fusebox Festival, Austin (2012). She is a recipient of several awards, including Official Winner of the International Istanbul Film Festival Award for H A I N T and TMI at Sigues du Nuit festival in Paris. She is currently completing a second master’s degree in Museum Studies from Harvard and plans to open a museum of cultural artifacts in Detroit.