HAINT is an immersive, three-channel video installation by Austin-based artist and curator Alyssa Taylor Wendt. Filmed over the course of three years in Croatia, Detroit, and Texas, the individual channels unfold in counterpoint with one another to create a haunting meditation on the ways we process history, both as individuals and as a culture. The piece draws on motifs from Wendt’s personal cosmology and explores the associative powers of perception, cycles of history and ruination, and the spiritual energy that objects, the landscape, and architectural spaces carry with them. Using Eastern European songs, voiceover, opera, black metal drones, and ambient sound, HAINT combines images of post-war architecture, monuments, and ruins to create a poetic investigation of war, memory, and storytelling. In addition to the video, the exhibition includes sculptural elements and a collection of staged production photographs that intersect with the video’s multifaceted narrative.
This exhibition is organized by MacKenzie Stevens, director, Visual Arts Center, with Clare Donnelly, gallery manager, Visual Arts Center, and Robin K. Williams, Ph.D. candidate in Art History at The University of Texas at Austin.
Bio
Alyssa Taylor Wendt (b. 1969, New York) received her B.A. from NYU in 1991 and her M.F.A. from Bard College in 2008. Her performances have been featured at the Museum of Art and Design, New York (2013); Fusebox Festival, Austin (2012); and NuMU Arts Center, Brooklyn (2010). She has had solo exhibitions at Women and Their Work, Austin (2015); Co-Lab Projects, Austin (2012, 2010); Vox Populi Gallery, Philadelphia (2011); and Lademoen Kunstnerverkstede Babel Gallery, Norway (2009). Her work has been included in group exhibitions at Monte Vista Projects, Los Angeles (2018); DEMO Gallery, Austin (2017); Third Man Records, Detroit (2016); Northern-Southern Gallery, Austin (2015); Southern Exposure, San Francisco (2014); New Museum for Contemporary Art, New York (2011); and Miami Art Basel (2008), among others. She is a recipient of numerous awards, including Official Winner at the International Istanbul Experimental Film Festival (2018) and grants from the City of Austin Cultural Council (2015-2018), and has held residencies at the School of Visual Arts, New York (2012); NES, Skagastrond, Iceland (2009); and Lademoen Kunstnerverkstede, Trondheim, Norway (2009).
