Family First?
There are exceptions. Francine Spiegel’s only preoccupation is what childbirth does to a perfectly good body. Her mixed-media “pelts” look like the combined contents of a baby’s stomach and a new mother’s psyche, vomited up together on a wall. Albert Chong, meanwhile, uses a corridorlike area to create a completely unironic shrine to his family, unusual for its mixed Chinese and African ancestry. The shrine comprises six photographic still lifes–mostly arrangements of old snapshots splashed with artfully strewn flowers–three of which are matted in copper decorated with iconic images representing the Chong clan’s intercontinental heritage. The effect is beautiful in a misty, lavender-and-old-lace sort of way. But Chong seems to be relying on the novelty of black-Asian miscegenation to give that beauty some drama, and intermarriage just isn’t the surprise it used to be. The shrine comes off as little more than a stranger’s rather overproduced photo album: a wan tribute to people we don’t know.
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It’s just as hard to stay mad at Miner, however, when he turns the attack on himself in the final half of the piece. Although far too talkative and obvious in his use, for instance, of a glass sliding door to suggest his anomie, he endears by virtue of his absolute willingness to anatomize himself as brother, son, and–ultimately–man. He may not take control in Gulf Shores, but he takes the blame. In that context, even the sliding door assumes a degree of poignancy.
Where: Skestos Gabriele, 212 N. Peoria
