Interview with Deborah Barr

https://www.deborahbarrart.com/

Deborah, your recent body of work explores the psychological fragmentation of identity in the digital age. How do you see the interplay of painterly gesture and digital manipulation, two vastly different mediums, working together to comment on Gen-Z's filtered reality?

Digital manipulation is a place to begin Transforming the manipulated images into a painting is always about the process and can never be exactly like the reference. My new work reflects GEN-Z’s fascination with perfection, social media and beauty. With the use of AI reality becomes lost. Today’s technology reflects twisted “truth’s,” idealized representation and false iconic beauty. Filters are used to change facial features, skin color and erase any aspect of self a person dislikes.

The iris flower recurs frequently in your compositions, embedded with symbolic weight. Could you expand on your decision to juxtapose this traditional emblem of hope with digitally distorted human figures and what dialogue you hope this contrast elicits?

Art is the most profound expression of the human spirit. I am exploring the psychological disjunction in our contemporary life caused by its fast pace and rapid changes. The youth of today have too much information, they struggle to keep their personal and/or cultural identity and try to make sense of reality. Their world has become filtered. The Iris suggests natures beauty, in it’s original form and is a symbol for hope.

Anthropological inquiry underpins your practice. How do you navigate the ethical dimensions of cultural representation when merging spiritual or ritualistic motifs from disparate traditions into a single, contemporary visual language?

All societies and cultures, have limits on what is acceptable behavior and what is allowable in the way of personal expression, yet the arts remain a relatively free space in which to create more complicated forms of public interaction. The world is open to integration and interpretation more than ever before and the effect that art has on us as individuals and as a society is now reaching beyond the borders of any given culture.

Mass communication -- via television, the Internet, and cinema, along with cultural syncretism and networking between nations and even continents, has enabled us as human beings to see beyond ourselves and our own boundaries.

In your paintings, there is a vivid tension between abstraction and figuration, where the figure often dissolves into vibrant chaos. How intentional is this disintegration, and does it speak to……..

Individual identities are becoming lost in mass. I want the veiwer to take time to see the figure. Not just walk by it. Art has been an emerging tool that is deliberately and consciously used by certain artists who are interested in contributing toward a greater understanding between people. It may help in bringing about - at least in a small way - a greater understanding of the dynamics of cultural and social paradigms. Art is another means of helping people see and better understand the dynamics of our world and how human consciousness impacts it at every level.

I think that Herman Melville puts it beautifully when he says: "We cannot live for ourselves alone. Our lives are connected by a thousand invisible threads, and along these sympathetic fibers, our actions run as causes and return to us as results."

Have you ever felt like

Somewhere Somehow 2023