Areca
Roe is a photographer of interiors, a careful accountant of creature
comforts. “Habitat” is a study of the spaces constructed for animals to
live in and to bring us closer to “nature.” She captures the places
where the enclosure exposes itself to the animals for what they really
are. Roe’s dispassionate eye allows the viewer’s assumptions to slowly
dissolve as their eye recognizes the fabricated murals and fake trees.
The contrast between the real and the unreal, natural and unnatural
creates a complex layers of experience that quietly inserts questions
about the lives of the captive animals into the viewer’s mind.
Many
of the photographs have a painterly quality. The interplay of light on
the plexi and glass barriers soften the surface of the enclosures,
creating a timeless, frozen quality. The window in the monkey house of
Lincoln Park Zoo, Chicago, Illinois #2 has fogged over and its
inhabitants have swiped smears in the drippy condensation, obscuring the
habitat and creating a flat abstract surface with gestural brush
strokes. The atmospheric light in Como Zoo, St. Paul, Minnesota, #2
gives the painted backdrop the appearance of a Hudson School landscape
with the surreal addition of penguins. In About Looking, John Berger
states, “In principle, each cage is a frame around the animal inside
it...They [Visitors] proceed from cage to cage, not unlike visitors in
an art gallery who stop in front of one painting and move on to the next
one after next.”
Roe,
who has an undergraduate degree in biology (with a concentration in ecology) is able to effortlessly
explore the myriad levels of illusion involved in creating a habitat for
animals that meets the needs of the humans who want to look at them.
Included in the exhibit are plastic toys used to entertain the polar
bears. Both are chewed and mangled by their powerful claws. They are
peculiar objects. Why do polar bears need a sled? What would they have
used in nature? Roe’s photographs expose our need for zoos and a
controlled interaction with the wild. “I just want people to think about
it a little,” she says. “I want them to come to their own conclusions.”
Areca Roe graduated from the University of Minnesota with a MFA in 2011 and currently lives and works in Minneapolis. Recently Roe completed an artist in residency at the Bell Museum and a solo exhibition at the Notre Dame University Department of Art. She has exhibited throughout the Midwest, as well as internationally in both Hungary and Finland. Roe has also received several grants and fellowships in support of her work including a 2012 Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Initiative Grant.
Areca Roe graduated from the University of Minnesota with a MFA in 2011 and currently lives and works in Minneapolis. Recently Roe completed an artist in residency at the Bell Museum and a solo exhibition at the Notre Dame University Department of Art. She has exhibited throughout the Midwest, as well as internationally in both Hungary and Finland. Roe has also received several grants and fellowships in support of her work including a 2012 Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Initiative Grant.
And more of Areca Roe's work HERE.
Article by Tamatha Perlman.
