Ring Lights ReImagined

LUSIO Light Festival, 2021

Artist statement

We’ve spent the past year of the pandemic watching our entertainment move from the professional studios of Hollywood to the living rooms of performers on TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, YouTube, and other digital platforms. The ring light has become ubiquitous as a cost-effective way to achieve a semi-pro look, omnipresent in the ring around the iris as performers sing and dance into their phone cameras. This installation plays with the traditional form of a ring light, super-sizing and squaring it, as well as with the traditional setup of placing it directly in front of a performer at face height. The super-size ring lights are mounted low to the ground to give dramatic up-lighting, horizontally at waist level to mimic modern dance lighting, and overhead to recreate the feel of isolated office fluorescent downlight. Additionally, the bright white light illuminating guests in contrast with the darkness of the farm further highlights the absurdity of this pandemic-era tool when we finally get out of our apartments and into nature.