Location: McKnight Art Center, Clayton Staples Gallery, Room 205

The Clayton Staples Gallery is proud to present "This Is Captured Paper," an exhibition of works by photographer Jason Reblando.

"For my project, "This Is Captured Paper," I create photocollages based upon archival images from the American colonial period in the Philippines. As a Filipino-American photographer and artist, I am interested in contemplating vital questions about the intertwining roles of photography, empire, and the archive. By physically cutting, pasting, and rearranging various elements of the images, I aim to deconstruct and critique the colonial gaze, while attempting to reclaim the photographic narrative. I hope that by layering and reshaping images upon images, the cumulative effect interrupts the reading of the original photograph. In some collages, the cut patterns reference textile-makers across the Philippine archipelago, while in other collages, shapes and silhouettes allude to a problematic colonial past.

"This Is Captured Paper" is a meditation upon the long, complex relationships between the Philippines and the United States, anthropology and photography, and mass media and society. By weaving historical photographs into my own contemporary art practice, I recontextualize archives that codified colonial power dynamics between the United States and the Philippines. Ultimately, I hope that my project will contribute to a growing conversation by contemporary artists who are eager to interrogate the colonizing power of the archive, not only for Filipinos, but for all members of the Global South." - Jason Reblando

The Clayton Staples Gallery is open to the public 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday.