Tulu's artist talk

            During Tulu’s artist talk, she mainly discussed her past works and then briefly talked about the “Playground” exhibit she just installed at the St Edwards Gallery.  Tulu is a multi media artist with a focus in photography.  In the past she has been inspired by outside sources as opposed to having a pragmatic approach.  Her work has a definite narrative quality and usually requires participation from the audience by requiring sensory involvement.  Some of Tulu’s work has a very playful aspect, but others are much heavier and have been created in response to issues around the world including domestic violence and religious controversies.

The first work she discussed is titled “Based on a True Story” where she interviewed 5 random women she met on the street.  It took a lot of interviewing to find 5 people who were willing and trusting, followed by a long process of getting to know each woman and becoming familiar with their every day experiences and trials.  (I wonder how much her vision of this installation changed after finding the women who were willing to participate.  Did she have a previous expectation as to the types of women she was going to use? )  Tulu has a background in formal photography but also enjoys experimenting with different techniques of photography.  For the prints used in “Based on a True Story” Tulu used household bleach to expose the images.  The completed installation had multi sensory elements including recorded dialect from each of the women, curtains the viewer had to touch to move into the space, and the visual aspect of the photos of the women projected onto a screen. Tulu has a very playful outlook on a lot of her pieces and wanted this to be a sort of game that the audience plays to figure out which photo goes with what voice. 

She then moved on to discuss some of her other works including Bleached Silver: “Admissions” which was a photography and sound Installation completed in 2001,  “Aphorism”, a photo and sound installation completed in 2003, and “Addicted”, a one hour performance space installation in 2006 raising awareness of domestic violence.

Tulu created several installations in 2005 one being “Confluence”, a video projection in response to an article about the banning of religious identity in France. Her response is very peaceful and pragmatic and can be seen as meditative.  She left it open-ended and free to a lot of different interpretation. Other pieces she created in 2005 were “Shelter”, a mixed media installation to acknowledge the refugees from all around the world, and “Page”, a video installation recognizing the discipline and time that went into the book the War Nurse.  I would be interested to know what backgrounds the viewer’s came from and how they felt after viewing these powerful pieces. 

Tulu then closed by giving us a little insight as to how “Playground” came to life.  “Playground” is and ongoing photo project involving the playful game of capturing another person taking a picture.  It started with a trip to Beijing where Tulu discovered countless tourists taking pictures of the empty stadium where the Olympics were held.  She saw it as her personal playground and found herself there for hours, catching people in the act of taking photos. Tulu didn’t see the potential of this project until she was editing her Beijing pictures and decided that it was going to be an ongoing project.  I think this project has a lot to offer contemporary photographers because she offers a new, collaborative approach to a photo project in which people from all over are involved.