File:Ellen Driscoll Loophole.jpg

Installation by Ellen Driscoll, The Loophole of Retreat (view of walk-in end of 8' x 8' x 13' camera obscura, wood, and objects circulating above on a wheel, 1991, Whitney Museum at Phillip Morris.). The image illustrates a body of work in Ellen Driscoll's career: her conceptual installations of the 1990s, which examined social and personal histories, power and agency, and knowledge through an inventive combination of materials, projected imagery, kinetic constellations, research, narrative, and visual strategies. This installation was inspired by the autobiography of a former slave and sought to explore her experience of seven years of hiding prior to escape through a large, walk-in camera obscura that projected enigmatic, Plato's cave-like images of suspended symbolic objects rotating on a large wheel outside the dwelling. This work was commissioned by a major museum, publicly exhibited in prominent exhibitions, and discussed in major art journals and daily press publications.

Artist Ellen Driscoll. Copyright held by the artist.

Ellen Driscoll

Installation view

Yes

The image serves an informational and educational purpose as the primary means of illustrating a body of work in Ellen Driscoll's career in the 1990s, when she turned toward complex, conceptual installation works that examined themes involving boundary crossing, social and personal histories, power and agency, knowledge and its relation to memory, experience and sensation. These works combined an inventive combination of materials, rudimentary and digital technologies (e.g., projected imagery and kinetic constellations of objects), research and narrative, and visual strategies involving light and shadow, silhouette, disorienting shifts in scale, metaphor and synecdoche. Critics suggested that they created fluid experiences described as "a cross between primitive filmmaking and antique hallucinations, which gave voice to historically under-represented figures and groups. Because the article is about an artist and her work, the omission of the image would significantly limit a reader's understanding and ability to understand this key body of work, which brought Driscoll wide recognition through coverage by major critics and publications and museum commissions and exhibitions. Ellen Driscoll's work of this type and this series 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 Ellen Driscoll, 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.