"On Vacation" 2018
"Writers (Artists) are on holiday, but their Muse is awake and gives birth non-stop."
-Roland Barthes, Mythologies
Over the course of two months during the summer of 2017, I visited three cities and two countries I had never seen before. During that time, I was undertaking an artist-in-residence program at the Joan Mitchell Center in New Orleans, followed by teaching a printmaking course in Paris, and ending with a trip to Berlin. My preconceived idea of vacation and leisure no longer existed. As I toured the highly trafficked, touristy landmarks and, alternatively, spoke with natives, I noticed a pattern connecting each city. All three disparate places had crucial impediments that have affected the world and shaped the way I viewed these cities. I became engaged in the historical context and contemporary personas these cities represented. It became unavoidable that I saw beyond the everyday perception of tourism and vacationing while considering my connection and relationship with these various places as an African-Amerian woman, an identity that is of the diaspora. On Vacation explores that journey through uncharted territories in an attempt to piece together a new narrative through the replication of photographic scenes with printmaking and sculpture, through the lens of an artist "on vacation."
-Tyanna Buie
