Video Art Installation Offers a Powerful Message on a Poncho

[COMMENTARY] GRAND RAPIDS — Hidden away behind a long winding corridor,  six floors up a freight elevator in 50 Louis NW in downtown Grand Rapids, is an art gallery brimming with powerful ideas. It is the Open Concepts Gallery, which is currently featuring a video installation by Prof.  Kim Roberts of Grand Valley State University. The feature is called “Focus on Family,” and is a dizzying, visceral and physical experience about anti-gay violence, built on simple symbolism.

Once you have maneuvered the obstacle course to get to the gallery, you discover a double foyer.  The first is  a greeting area, the second is the entry into the display. In the second area, viewers are asked to don fake sheepskin ponchos, white side out, and are then ushered into a large, quiet sanctuary that formerly was a ballroom. It has a cathedral ceiling with ornate work on it and beautifully designed wood panels and staircases. The majority of the room is white, setting off the starkness of the wood.

Continued -Set in a circle in the middle of the ballroom are five large mirrors, each facing inward and resting on an easel. Each easel is fronted by a small throw rug, with a DVD player and video projector. There are three sets of headphones at each mirror — one on either side and a third directly dead center of the mirror. Participants are encouraged to step to one of the three headset locations and put them on. The person selecting the center space places his or her headphones on, then spreads his or her arms. The video, which plays in a continuous loop, is projected onto the  sheepskin poncho and viewed in the mirror.

The room is hauntingly silent, a reflection of the intensity of the stories being told. The five stations feature the stories of individuals who have faced and survived anti-gay violence. The stories are moving, some are difficult to listen to because of the pain. The room’s silence is broken only occasionally by a hushed whisper or a sniffle.

In such a simple setting  it is hard to believe a life-changing event is occurring for people.  “It’s sacred,” said Greg Bliss, a Grand Rapids artist. “It’s not a political issue, it’s an issue of people’s lives.”

Kate Runyon, interim executive director of the Triangle Foundation, the anti-violence program  located in Detroit,  concurs with Bliss. “It let their stories sink in more deeply, it was more like creating a legacy. It made their stories more personal and vivid.”

Artist Kim Roberts said the installation grew out of a year-long sabbatical she took last year to explore the nature of evil. She said she had been overwhelmed by the anti-gay marriage amendment passed in Michigan in 2004 and was worried about the violence society is imposing on lesbians, bisexuals, gays and trans-sexuals.

“The first image that came to me was the mirror,” said Roberts. “Looking in a mirror while hearing these stories was a powerful idea to me.”

At first she explored using a satin-like cloth as the projection poncho, but gave up on it because it was too much like a KKK robe. Then she discovered the sheepskin.  “I thought this is great. I want people to ask themselves as they are looking in the mirror as if they are wolves in sheep’s clothing,” she said.

And the projections and sheepskin work, in combination with the physical strain of standing for 50 minutes, to give a new perspective to an age-old problem. The various contortions on the faces of the video subjects caused by the movement of the poncho-wearing viewer causes one to see the twists and turns the LGBT community must go through as victims trying to navigate a mostly uncaring society.

The exhibit will continue through Nov. 29. It is open  Monday-Friday 1-5 p.m. or at other times by arrangement with the gallery. Admission to the gallery is free. The gallery can be reached  at openconceptgallery.org, and Kim Roberts can be reached at KimRobertstudio.com.