MEGAN BENT: PATIENT / BELONGINGS
October 21-December 23,2022
OPENING RECEPTION
October 28, 5-7pm
RECEPTION WITH THE ARTIST
November 18, 5-7pm
ARTIST TALK
November 19, 7-8pm
(October 2022) In Patient / Belongings, Megan Bent presents a selection of photographic meditations from the series I Don’t Want to Paint A Silver Lining Around It, which centers the artist’s experience as a disabled person throughout the Covid-19 pandemic. Vivid reproductions of chlorophyll prints on leaves presented alongside their originals speak to exquisite and fleeting realities of human life. An opening reception for the artist will be held on Friday, October 28 from 5 – 7pm.
As much as the content of Megan Bent’s imagery begs us to understand the difficulties of disability, it invests equal time into reframing the way that we perceive the state of being disabled. In her own understanding of her degenerative illness, the artist has embraced the disability concept of “Crip Time,” which values slowness, care and attention over speed and constant production.
While the world has become accustomed to photography’s sleek, digital edges, Bent’s practice actively rejects this standard in favor of radically surprising processes that embrace the temporary materiality of the natural world. Patient / Belongings features decaying leaves that hold fleeting records in chlorophyll: as these light-sensitive substrates are exposed to the world, the imagery they hold will inevitably disappear.
To interact with one of these delicate specimens, the viewer lifts up a curtain, peering into the shadow box for as long as they need to with the understanding that their time with this work is finite. Simultaneously, digital archival pigment prints present documentation of Bent’s original photographic objects, serving as permanent, jewel-toned reminders of the loss of their source. Patient / Belongings creates space for an intentional embrace of concurrent experiences, those of ability and disability, united under the corporeal impermanence that we all share.
Megan Bent is a lens-based artist interested in the malleability of photography and the ways image-making can happen beyond using a traditional camera. This interest started to occur after the diagnosis of a progressive chronic illness. Drawn to image-making processes that reject perfection, accuracy, or any certainty in results, she is interested instead in processes that reflect and embrace her disabled experience; especially interdependence, impermanence, care, and slowness. Her work has been exhibited internationally and throughout the United States at venues ranging from the Houston Center for Photography to festivals across France and Spain. She was a 2021/2022 Art + Disability Resident through Art Beyond Sight and has presented work at conferences domestically and abroad.