Walking in Lightness

Walking in Lightness is a multidisciplinary installation. The process-based work begins with psychogeographic sound walks through Sunset Park Brooklyn, a neighborhood largely populated by Mexican immigrants. On these walks, Gutiérrez uses a disposable 35mm camera to document her environment. In the resulting gelatin silver prints, Gutiérrez presents multiple iterations of the same print with variations in tone from very dark to very light. These variations reiterate the parallels between the process of artistic creation, and her experience as an immigrant by referencing both the notion of invisibility and ‘ever-becoming.’ In the video Walking in Lightness, the artist documents herself working in the darkroom. She incorporates two-dimensional animations made with the photographic prints, accompanied by binaural soundtracks which emphasize the narrator’s voice as a woman of color inhabiting an adopted environment.

Throughout the exhibition, the gallery will also function as a performative studio; using the space to create visual essays created from darkroom test prints, which comprise part of the video installation. The visibility of the analog film process, the studio, and scheduled Chinatown soundwalks invite the viewer to participate in the artist’s experience, thus establishing a relationship between the cultural identity of the observer (the ethnographer) and artist.

Walking in Lightness was produced during the annual artist in residency at The Camera Club of New York and presented as a solo exhibition ar Baxter Street.

Walking in Lightness in Baxter Street

Animations created on the gallery as a studio.