UVA’s Overlook Gallery
January 28 – March 11, 2024
Open Sundays 11 to 4pm and Mondays Noon – 5pm
This exhibit features the work of Claudia Starkey and Jose Trejo-Maya
“Fragmented” is a photography series by Claudia Starkey that was created using an intricate computer algorithm. It is a surrealist exploration of how the brain processes memories intentionally replicated using current technology. The innovative method of composing photos uses personal photos that the artist has taken mixed in with others inherited as family heirlooms. It blends in images of her ancestors and childhood, along with more contemporary scenes of people, places, and objects. The photos range anywhere from the early 70s to the current times, but a few go all the way back to the 1920s. Each photograph is a journey into a surrealist realm.
“Transparencies in Time” is a visual art installation by Jose Trejo-Maya that is both interactive, multidisciplinary, and kin-esthetic audio-visual sculpture. It’s a multi-phase comprehensive exposé on Mesoamerican lore and more specifically on a pre-Columbian notion of time. The poetry is alive, and the oral tradition still lives, though it’s thought that this ancient culture is dead.
Claudia Starkey
Starkey’s experience with poetry and writing also played a significant role in her artistic journey. She won the top national prize in poetry at a young age, and although she continued to be awarded for her work, she felt overwhelmed by the attention. She withdrew into her childhood fantasy world, finding solace in daydreaming.
Starkey’s experience growing up in Romania during the fall of communism also influenced her perspective on photography. She watched as expression became raw and uncensored, with people finally able to come out fully. Starkey’s “Fragmented” series is a reflection of her own transformation and exploration of memory, a surrealistic journey that touches on the universal themes of life and death.
For Claudia Starkey, documenting her memories through photography was a deeply personal and cathartic process. As she explains in her series “Fragmented”, she used the medium of photography to explore how the brain processes memories and to create a surrealistic world that was both familiar and puzzling.
But beyond the artistic aspect of her work, documenting her memories was important for Claudia on a more profound level. As she reflects on her childhood, her family did not have access to the technologies people have today, to immortalize mundane moments of everyday life. In Claudia’s view, photographs are deeply intimate objects that hold a piece of the subject’s life and allow us to break into the fabric of time. By capturing and preserving these moments, she was able to create a visual record of her life that would allow her to revisit those memories and emotions in a tangible way.
Furthermore, through her photography, Claudia was able to connect with her ancestors and family history in a way that she found meaningful. By blending personal photos that she had taken with others inherited as family heirlooms, she created a visual narrative that spoke to the complexity and interconnectedness of her personal history.
In essence, Claudia’s decision to document her memories through photography was a way for her to reclaim her past, to create a sense of continuity and meaning in her life, and to express her deepest emotions and ideas through a powerful visual medium. Her work reminds us of the importance of preserving our memories, our personal histories, and the things that make us who we are.
Jose Trejo-Maya
I am a remnant of the Nahuatlacah oral tradition a tonalpouhque mexica, a commoner from the lowlands (i.e. Mexico) from a time and place that no longer exists. At present my poetry has been reified as it has been published in the UK, US, India, Spain, Australia, Argentina, Germany and Venezuela. I have been exhibited in different venues with a work that’s titled: Transparencies in Time: Cuahpohualli embedded in ethnopoetic language poetry:. I seek to expand on this work into a comprehensive exhibit in a gallery in 3D (i.e. three simultaneous exhibitions that expand into multiple levels of perception and/or dimensions).
I was born in Celaya, Guanajuato, Mexico, where I spent my childhood in the small neighboring rural pueblo of Tarimoró and wherefrom my family immigrated in 1988. My inspiration(s) include Netzahualcoyotl, Humberto Ak’abal, Ray A. Young Bear, and James Welch. I have a work in progress of a short-story series were I interpolate the sunstone calendar (i.e. the primary source of the Cauhpohualli Computo del tiempo azteca y su correlacion actual Anahuacayotl de Tlaxcalancingo, Puebla); to bring to life a micro-fiction project titled San Miguel de Tarimoro ca. 1546. It’s a micro-fiction work of short stories that delve into the immaterial aspects of time. It will be digitized into video with simultaneous audio in video-book view narration. Namely, it’s a bridge from poetry to narrative storytelling. The work is a catalog of the 365 days in the Tonalpohualli or count of days in hologram. My work is rooted in Mesoamerican lore and a pre-Columbian notion of time that’s extant in the poetics and as such it’s the foundation and bedrock. While in ceremony with Chololo medicine men in the Tule River Reservation he dreamt this written prophecy.