Page - 213 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 07/01

living-room floors. These views, not quite unique to one home, but not quite not, render the photographs universalizable. During a time when we feel alone, forced to reconcile with new realities, and trapped inside them, the ex- hibit connects us via the spaces that protect but also trap us. Comprising the mundane objects which constitute a bathroom, a bedroom, a kitchen, the im- ages echo the objects that, if we are lucky enough, also texture our everyday. An orange towel splashed across a blue tiled floor (“Bathroom”, Sam Winston, 27 June 2020), a boy shrouded in a sheet as he plays piano (“Living Room, Buf- falo New York”, Yola Monakhov Stockton, 15 June 2020); through that which is immanent the photographs allow us to transcend the monotony that is our own. Through what is commonplace, they invite us to miraculously be any place. Through a play with what is familiar, they make us feel connected through the things which surround us in our homes. Roles of toilet paper centered by Justin Kimball and Sam Winston, vibrant collections of fruits and vegetables soaking in soapy water as framed by Guler Ates, spaces of sex and sleep transformed by Alyssa Coffin, Michael Takeo Magruder, Claudia Hermano, Gol Kamra, and Yola Monakhov Stockton; all of these are crafted into photographs that ocularly arouse.2 Thus, these spaces of washing and bathing and cooking and fucking meant to be inhabited only by those most intimately connected are exposed. The photographs appeal because they render the intimate public. Thus, the artist’s space becomes a snapshot upon which the world is meant to gaze. In this way, the images, as well as the artists who have photographed them and the curators who have staged them, open a space for connection by means of the home meant oth- erwise, and especially right now, to keep us apart. The artists in this exhibition push against what it means, or what we think it means, to be “domestic”. The previously private domestic life (considered historically to be the realm of the womb and women) has been positioned in opposition to the public, the world of labor, economy, politics, and man. This exhibition invites the public eye into what we have deemed as the private, ad- vancing our notions of what it means to be domestic, to be at home. Forging connections through the spaces that we consider as our most intimate, the artists transform the binary of private and public life. 2 “Bathroom”, Justin Kimball, April 18, 2020; “Bathroom”, Sam Winston, April 18, 2020; “Kitchen, Fruit Bath”, Guler Ates, May 15, 2020; “Bedroom”, Alyssa Coffin, April 18, 2020; “Bedroom, Spare Room, Physical Record”, Michael Takeo Magruder, May 22, 2020; “Bedroom”, Claudia Hermano, May 22, 2020; “Bedroom”, Gol Kamara, June 12, 2020; “Bedroom”, Yola Monakhov Stockton, April 12, 2020. Exhibition Review: Home Alone Together | 213www.jrfm.eu 2021, 7/1, 211–215