Shannon Alberse

I’ve been passionate about art since childhood, and after falling ill and suffering from a brain injury, art became a therapeutic staple in my life. For years after, I struggled in my personal life and had very little sense of self.

It was amid the worst years that I began to create symmetrical renderings with ink blots, and later with silver gelatin prints. The symmetry became cathartic, and the balance within my art grew to compensate for the lack of equilibrium in my past. The ambition for my show, “Inaequalis”, is to push the concept of balance further and to focus on the imbalances in society as a whole.

The name for my show (Latin for “unbalanced”) and the figure in the center of the arrangement of my paintings (loosely modeled after Pope John Paul II) are both nods towards Notre Dame Cathedral. The Cathedral, after catching fire in April 2019, received nearly $1 billion of pledges from billionaire donors almost immediately. The copper leaf behind the wildlife has a double meaning. It references the gold halos found in Renaissance artwork which typically surround those who are closer to God. The varriagated red copper leaf, as opposed to gold, is also meant to serve as a symbolic representation of the fires that ravaged Australia from 2019-2020.

The intended goal of my show as a whole is to invite viewers to question their priorities. Notre Dame and Australia are simply used as relevant conduits.

The bottom line should be this: at the end of the day, man-made structures and institutions are only worth the values that people put into them, and there must always be a balance.