Artist, writer and performer Juliacks is bringing her sound-based exhibit, “The Blind Rooms,” to the Lightwell Gallery at OU.
Hosted by the OU School of Visual Arts, the exhibit will feature choreography of natural light, surrounding paintings and performing bodies. The audience will listen to headsets with different pre-recorded audio narratives while viewing the piece, according to a press release from the School of Visual Arts. The end result is several distinct “rooms,” which may or may not line up with the narrative the viewer is listening to.
Juliacks wants each viewing to be different from the last, according to the press release.
“The experience for the viewer will be filled with symbolic coincidences, so that each viewer will have a different experience of the narrative that they hear,” Juliacks said in the release.
Juliacks will collaborate with student artists from the visual arts and drama departments to install the piece and bring it to life during the opening exhibition. According to Jonathan Hils, associate professor of contemporary sculpture, unique art experiences like Juliacks’ have grown to be increasingly popular among Norman residents. This popularity has attracted artists from around the world to bring their pieces to OU.
“There is a strong and unique pull for contemporary artists to consider exhibiting in Oklahoma,” Hils said in an email to The Daily. “As we don’t necessarily have a strong national art scene in Oklahoma City per se, there is an exoticism associated with the experience to exhibit contemporary art here.”
Hils said that bringing artists like Juliacks to the university and giving them a space in which they can display their work benefits the students and the Norman community immensely.
“As an institution, our mission is to provide the campus, city and surrounding areas with contemporary art that doesn’t necessarily fit within the normal expectations,” Hils said in the email. “We try to bring a range of works, with a range of perspectives and diversity that can speak to the way art translates, redefines, and represents the ideas and emotions of our contemporary times. This is the kind of work that our students need to be exposed to and aware of as they move into the professional art world.”
“The Blind Rooms” will be on display from Oct. 8 to Nov. 2 in the Lightwell Gallery. The gallery is open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. every weekday and is free to the public. There will also be an open reception on Oct. 9 from 5 to 7 p.m., with an artist talk by Juliacks at 5:30 p.m.
