People We Love - York Minster
Unfortunately, the second national Covid lockdown in the UK meant that KMA’s installation People We Love in York Minster was only open for a handful of days before it had to close. As a result, we had no opportunity to add more portraits to the original sixty-nine who sat for the work’s opening (the original idea was that the work grew daily as more people chose to sit for it in a custom-built filming booth within the Minster).
Despite these frustrations, I am hugely grateful that the work saw the light of day and was housed in such a remarkable space.
In its short incarnation, it became apparent that there are two very different ways in which People We Love can be experienced.
From a distance, the five screens suggest a collective condition; both the commonality and specificity of each individual’s response are on view. The multiple portraits indicate a choice: where to focus one’s attention? This, along with the five spotlights focussed in front of each subject, are reminders that the viewer is not asked to be a passive participant in this relationship but is invited into an active transaction with the work.
On stepping forward and making a choice, the viewer’s eyes meet the subject's steady, silent, life-size gaze, and something entirely different reveals itself.
The act of looking intently into the face of another, of staring and probing, of questioning the changing features of a stranger’s countenance, watching every twitch and blink for signs of the story beneath, is a revelation. This opportunity to look, in detail, to examine, both analytically and empathically, is a rarity.
On those few other cultural occasions when a stare is invited, it’s usually a request to look upon a carefully curated face, a portrait of success perhaps, or an advertisement, the message and the face inextricably interwoven.
The subjects of People We Love, filmed in the act of looking at a loved one, seem to have been stripped of all self-consciousness. They meet our questioning gaze without artifice or hostility, instead, they stare back with honesty, vulnerability, and love.
I find in all of these faces a silent affirmation of much that is best about being human, about the love that binds us, the stories that connect us, the light we create for ourselves partly in acknowledgement and partly in defiance, of the pain and suffering that accompanies us all.
I am hugely grateful to York Mediale and to the Minster for making the installation possible, but most of all, I’m grateful to these inaugural sitters.
