Archipelagoes (2019), 2019panel 14
Archival pigment print
20 × 16 in.
Edition 1 of 3
This panel of Carrie Yamaoka’s Archipelagoes resists naming altogether, offering a burnished field of golden-brown tonalities that recalls a weathered map or eroded terrain. By withholding words, it draws attention to surface, process, and instability—themes at the heart of Yamaoka’s practice. The original photograms of the 1990s, made without a camera through direct manipulation of light and chemistry, have themselves deteriorated from exposure to air and time. In contrast, the archival pigment prints of 2019 revive their imagery with vivid freshness. Yet they are not mere reproductions: they are a “re-iteration of the original idea, made in a different moment,” acknowledging both distance from and continuity with the analogue source. Like the carceral landscapes Yamaoka references—sites that are built, repurposed, and erased—the cycle itself migrates across generations of media. The title Archipelagoes resonates here, evoking not only island chains but also the dispersal of sites of confinement across the American landscape. Panel 14 becomes a space of silence, where history lingers in matter even when language recedes from view.Inquire