"The Host or the Guest?" Featuring L. Mikelle Standbridge

This episode connects us with L. Mikelle Standbridge at her studio just outside of Milan, Italy. During the talk, we discuss her solo exhibition "The Host or the Guest?" on view at El Nido art space in East Hollywood, curated by VC Projects. (Exhibition dates: July 31 - September 11th, 2021)

The art of L. Mikelle Standbridge is a passionate endeavor, thoughtfully narrating personal stories about her subject’s embodiment. Varying in size and shape, her delicate one-of-a-kind pieces are derived from the reconfiguration of photographic prints, exploring a paper that the artist refers to as “pulpy, pierceable, stitchable, and flexible.” The work might have multiple layers or be hand-torn and stitched along the edges. It is not unusual to find works stacked on top of each other on a shelf or suspended with moving parts. All the while, these images are set within detailed backgrounds that explore intimacy, ensuring the connection between the subject and the maker. 

Standbridge says, "I am profoundly interested in Photography and this interest informs my subject matter and presentation choices. This series, Photo-Bodies, is in part dedicated to what has probably been photography’s most astounding characteristic and that is - in the form of portraiture or a "likeness"- having the uncanny, powerful potential of alluding to the non-visible, to an emanation (such as a personality, a soul, or an aura of a person). By photographing people, especially people who have undergone alterations to their bodies or whose lives are dominated by their appearance, my body of work hovers around the question of physicality (what it might reveal, what it might cover-up)."

Link to the exhibition: https://www.vcprojects.art/l-mikelle-standbridge-the-host-or-the-guest

Visit the artist's website: http://www.standbridge.net