By Elin Spring
I write this on the twentieth anniversary of 9/11, remembering an attack that brought our nation together in mourning. Two decades on, our nation is reeling from the tenacious attack of a pandemic that is tearing our society apart. Both events have brought us face to face with our mortality, which makes it especially timely and poignant to consider how different cultures remember loved ones who have died. In “BUDDHA + CHRIST” at Gallery Kayafas in Boston’s South End, Robert Richfield takes an agnostic look at the talismans of mourning in enlightening photographs of cemeteries and shrines that serve as “gateways into the lives and cultures they memorialize.” In the Alcove at the Gallery, Sanjé James’ “Familiar Interplay” memorializes a year of isolation, a struggle to come of age and preserve a sense of community with her “remote” senior class at Lesley Art + Design. By contrasting opposite ends of life’s spectrum, these exhibits elucidate the fabric of cultural identities. On view through October 16th, 2021, there will be an Artist Reception on Friday October 1st, 2021.
“Taos 2, New Mexico” 2017 by Robert Richfield, courtesy of the artist and Gallery Kayafas, Boston.
In BUDDHA + CHRIST, veteran photographer Robert Richfield invites viewers on an existential journey, looking at shrines and cemeteries to explore cultural attitudes about religion and death. It seems like a logical point on his photographic continuum. Richfield has spent a good deal of his career contemplating how people come and go, as evidenced in his sweeping visual studies of places of connection, such as bridges and train stations across the globe.
“Hoi An 1, Vietnam” 2018 by Robert Richfield, courtesy of the artist and Gallery Kayafas, Boston.
An insatiable traveler with meticulous methodology, Richfield lugged his medium format equipment across largely Catholic France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Guatemala, New Mexico and Buddhist Vietnam from 2017 to 2019. While his precise camera placement, perspectives and compositions reveal much of Richfield’s own probing personality, their pleasing visual poetry accentuates and facilitates comparisons. His sustained focus on fertile details around memorial sites create fascinating sociological studies.
Installation view of TOP: “Antigua Cemetery, Guatemala” 2018 and BOTTOM: “Chichicastenango, Guatemala” 2018 by by Robert Richfield, courtesy of the artist and Gallery Kayafas, Boston. (Photo by Elin Spring)
Installation view of detail from “Antigua Cemetery, Guatemala” 2018 by Robert Richfield, courtesy of the artist and Gallery Kayafas, Boston. (Photo by Elin Spring)
Installation view of detail from “Chichicastenango, Guatemala” 2018 by by Robert Richfield, courtesy of the artist and Gallery Kayafas, Boston. (Photo by Elin Spring)
Despite surface differences, a common religious thread is obvious in Christian memorials, predicated on a belief that we have one life and cemeteries exist to honor the past. European and Central American Catholics share certain burial customs, for example in their adorned, stacked mausoleums. In multi-frame murals across one wall of the gallery are two such sites, both in Guatemala, that clearly occupy economically distinct neighborhoods. One is formally painted and decorated, not to mention fastidiously guarded (top detail) while the other makes up for its relative shabbiness with vibrantly painted facades (bottom detail). More upscale European cemeteries contain individual gravesites, appointed with abundant crosses and figurines. Predictably enough, American gravesites seem to be on steroids, showcasing our passion for individualism and excess with accumulations of highly personalized memorabilia, such as handwritten testimonials, bandanas, stuffed animals – and American flags, everywhere.
Installation view of “Jesus Nazareno 3, Ranchos de Taos, New Mexico” 2017 by Robert Richfield, courtesy of the artist and Gallery Kayafas, Boston. (Photo by Elin Spring)
Installation view of “Pha An Thoi Dong, Vietnam” 2018 by Robert Richfield, courtesy of the artist and Gallery Kayafas, Boston. (Photo by Elin Spring)
The Vietnamese memorials differ structurally, favoring symmetric formality and ornate latticework. The iconography also differs and the gifts brought suggest a belief in some form of sustained existence, in a place where loved ones would benefit from the food and money left for them. Richfield’s images recognize the Buddhist sense of continuity between life and death. To me, it seems to be the greatest spiritual demarcation between East and West. And the greatest similarity seems to be a fondness for flowers, that universal symbol of fleeting life.
“Hanoi 3, Vietnam” 2018 by Robert Richfield, courtesy of the artist and Gallery Kayafas, Boston. (Photo by Elin Spring)
Installation view of “Familiar Interplay” by Sanjé James, courtesy of the artist and Gallery Kayafas, Boston. (Photo by Elin Spring)
Installation view of “Familiar Interplay” by Sanjé James, courtesy of the artist and Gallery Kayafas, Boston. (Photo by Elin Spring)
Artists of a certain age reliably endeavor to sort out existential questions, and Robert Richfield’s BUDDHA + JESUS gratifies artistically and spiritually. Just as reliably, artists coming of age struggle with questions of their life’s direction and purpose. A newly minted multimedia graduate of Lesley Art + Design, Sanjé James was forced to complete her senior year from the confines of her remote bedroom via Zoom. Installed in the Alcove of the gallery, “Familiar Interplay” highlights James’ photographically-based interpretation of this “shared” experience. At once intimate, collective and chaotic, James’ layered images sometimes condense, other times parse, a cacophony of emotions. Her portraits of friends and herself seesaw from secretive to alluring and from suffocating to hopeful in her heartfelt memorial to an (always) conflicted age that indelibly shapes the future self.
Installation view of “Familiar Interplay” by Sanjé James, courtesy of the artist and Gallery Kayafas, Boston. (Photo by Elin Spring)
For more information about this exhibit, go to: https://www.gallerykayafas.com/current
Feature Image: “Palau, Sardinia (Italy)”, 2018 by Robert Richfield, courtesy of the artist and Gallery Kayafas, Boston.
Share On Facebook
Tweet It
