File:Judith-Barry Imagination-Dead-Imagine.jpg

Installation by Judith Barry, Imagination, dead imagine (Installation: 5 channel video-sound projection, 10' x 10' x 10', 1991/2018). The image illustrates a key body of work by artist Judith Barry in the 1990s and beyond, when she produced installation works that emphasized the corporeal and kinesthetic as well as the visual, challenging the traditional art experience. This work, made at the height of the AIDS crisis, consisted of a 10-foot mirrored cube wrapped with five rear-projection screens depicting a seemingly caged, androgynous head (in frontal, back and profile views) being successively flooded with muck resembling bodily fluids and insects, with each defilement followed by a video wipe restoring a cleansed face. This work and body of work has been publicly exhibited in prominent exhibitions at major venues, and discussed in major art journals and daily press publications.

Artist Judith Barry. Copyright held by the artist.

Judith Barry

Installation view

Yes

The image has contextual significance in that it serves an informational and educational purpose as the primary means of illustrating a key body of work in Judith Barry's career in the 1990s: her installation works exploring the body, perception and the insertion of the kinesthetic into visually dominated discourses. These works often foregrounded a visceral, corporeal element to "infect" the pristine forms and environments common to exhibition spaces. Frequently, they referenced a wide range of cultural sources, including for example, the existential writers Samuel Beckett and J. G. Ballard, theorist Julia Kristeva's concept of the abject and Robert Morris's minimalist art. Because the article is about an artist and her work, the omission of the image would significantly limit a reader's ability to understand this distinct body of work in her practice, which brought Barry continuing recognition through public exhibitions, commissions and coverage by major critics and publications. Barry's work of this type and this work itself is discussed in the article and by critics cited in the article.

There is no free equivalent of this or any other of this series by Judith Barry, so the image cannot be replaced by a free image.

The image will not affect the value of the original work or limit the copyright holder's rights or ability to distribute the original due to its low resolution and the general workings of the art market, which values the actual work of art. Because of the low resolution, illegal copies could not be made.