L’unica presenza era l’assenza. (The only presence was absence.)
—Claudio Parmiggiani
Acknowledging an absence makes it present. After all, these two notions are not mutually exclusive but rather, they enter into a fecund dialogue. How do you express absence? How do you engage with remembering and forgetting, erasing, and hiding and revealing? Do you use your art to memorialize absent persons or to process trauma (in a certain way, moving towards being able to let go and even forget)? Do you work in an additive or subtractive manner or both? Do you completely erase or do you maintain a ghostly presence of what you have removed? Do you cut out and/or paste in? As you consider such ideas, you might also think about the impact such modus operandi has on the way you think about continuity and discontinuity, figure and ground, along with your handling of mediums such as collage or drawing. We invite you to explore these concepts and reflect upon how they manifest themselves in your work both thematically and in your artistic process.
Kara Walker, The Rich Soil Down There, cut paper and adhesive on painted wall, 15 x 33 ft., 2002 (courtesy of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston), https://collections.mfa.org/objects/467925.
The Maine Arts Journal theme for the Winter 2023 issue appears online 1 January 2023; the deadline for articles is 1 December 2022.
Guidelines for MEMBER submisions:
4 JPEG or png images (NO TIFF files), approximately 2800 pixels in width, resolution 72dpi.
- Include an image list and essay in Word doc. format, NOT a PDF.
- Label each image file as follows: your last name_Number of Image_Title (with no spaces in the title). Please DO NOT put whole caption/credit in image file label, see image list/caption format below (if you are submitting for a group put your own last name in first).
- Label your document file names: Last Name_Title
- Image list/caption format: create a list that is numbered to match the number in your image file label that includes the following: Artist’s Name, Title of Work, medium, size (example: 9 x 12 in.), date (optional), photo credit (example: photo: Ansel Adams) if not included, we assume it is courtesy of the artist. Example: Unknown Artist, Untitled, oil on canvas, 9 x 12 in., 2000 (photo: Ansel Adams).
- Please wait until all of your material is compiled to submit. It’s easier for us if you send us all your images NOT in Dropbox or WeTransfer, in multiple emails if necessary.
Put “Absence/Presence?” in the subject line and submit by email to umvalistings@gmail.com by the 1 December 2022 deadline.
MAJ will limit the “Members’ Showcase” section to UMVA members who have not been published in the past year. (So sorry. This was mistakenly omitted and was added on 11/30/22)
Do not send preformatted visual essays. Our editors will lay out text and images submitted using the guidelines above.
Jean (Hans) Arp, Before My Birth, collage, 4⅜ x 3⅝ in., 1914, private collection.
It is the MAJ’s policy to request and then publish image credits. We will not publish images the submitter does not have the right to publish. However, it is to be assumed that any uncredited or unlabeled images are the author’s/submitter’s own images. By submitting to the MAJ, you are acknowledging respect for these policies.
Image at top: Christian Boltanski, Tiroir (Drawer), black-and-white photograph, clothes in tin drawer covered with mesh, and clip lamp, 1988, Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA (photo: Véronique Plesch).