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There is Nothing After Friday<\/em>\u2009; After Friday<\/em>, details from the project After Friday<\/em>, 2015.
Photos: courtesy of the artist<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
In contrast to Levinas\u2019s view, other thinkers have engaged with empathy in art, defining it by its capacity to simulate \u201canother person\u2019s inner state of mind.\u201d3<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 3 <\/a> - Tammy Amiel-Houser and Adia Mendelson-Maoz, \u201cAgainst Empathy: Levinas and Ethical Criticism in the 21st Century,\u201d Journal of Literary Theory 8, no, 1 (2014): 201.<\/span>But then, what do we make of the irrepresentability that Jacques Ranci\u00e8re found at the heart of an art that strives to showcase suffering?4<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 4 <\/a> - Jacques Ranci\u00e8re, \u201cS\u2019il y a de l\u2019irrepr\u00e9sentable,\u201d in Le destin des images (Paris: La fabrique, 2003), 125\u201353.<\/span>Simply put, art makes visible that which is incommunicable; it is the first step in identifying that toward which to be empathetic. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Martin solicits comparisons to other well-known explorations of the relationship between photography and death. Echoes of Roland Barthes\u2019s search for the likeness of his recently deceased mother are perceptible, as that search has defined photography theory in uncontestably touching ways.5<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 5 <\/a> - Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography, trans. Richard Howard (New York: Hill and Wang, 1982), 63.<\/span> Similarly, Martin calls up images of her grandmother that are recognizable only in fragments. Much like Barthes\u2019s distant and oneiric6<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 6 <\/a> - Ibid., 63, 66.<\/span> encounter with his mother, the dream-like, fragmentary nature of Martin\u2019s work attests to the complexity of loss and yearning; Martin envelops viewers and yet buoys them through their journey with her series of well-paced jokes. The death that she portrays offers a trove of melancholy pictures in which she searches for meaning in past and present relationships. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Art and death are not bound merely by contemplation. Martin is also interested in cathexis. Take, for example, You are Talking to Yourself<\/em> (2014), a series of altered photographic images displayed sparsely in a gallery setting so as to not overwhelm the space. Here, a personal punctum \u2014 or constructed first-person narrative in the performatist vein7<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 7 <\/a> - Raoul Eshelman, \u201cPerformatism, or the End of Postmodernism (American Beauty),\u201d in Supplanting the Postmodern: An Anthology of Writings on the Arts and Culture of the Early 21st Century, ed. David Rudrum and Nicholas Stavris (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015), 118.<\/span> \u2014 punctures a well-worn postmodern device of textual and visual superposition. In fact, Martin subverts a meme economy that traffics in emotional exploitation. In this series, we can observe a chart of constellations overlain with the caption: \u201cYou are a black hole a vaccum filled with dead stars you are the life of the party.\u201dOr there is an image of a woman falling out of an apartment building window, with the unfocused fuzziness of a Warhol tabloid silkscreen (Suicide, 1964), captioned with the text, \u201cYou\u2019re not worried you keep telling yourself you\u2019ve lived through worse you\u2019ve lived through worse you\u2019re not\u201d \u2014 cutting off suddenly as we imagine the fate of the woman. Here, Martin again evokes empathy in art, this time through the interplay between humour and cathexis. Freud explains in Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious that comic effect is dependent on the calibration of empathy between one person\u2019s cathectic response and someone else\u2019s.8<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 8 <\/a> - Sigmund Freud, Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious, trans. James Strachey, ed. Angela Richards (New York: Penguin Books, 1986), 255.<\/span> Martin\u2019s provocation of cathexis through humour inevitably results in the empathetic lifeline that she throws to the viewer: we are the \u201cyou\u201d in You are Talking to Yourself<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n To paraphrase Levinas, empathy for the stranger seems to be beyond reach.9<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 9 <\/a> - Amiel-Houser and Mendelson-Maoz, \u201cAgainst Empathy,\u201d 207.<\/span> Yet Martin cracks the fa\u00e7ade of the \u201cbare being,\u201d Levinas\u2019s concept of solitude, with the device of a joke. Normal Wear and Tear <\/em>(2017) is a series of diptychs juxtaposing photographs of details of the artist\u2019s body with architectural or spatial imagery to create bleak yet facetious assemblages. One such diptych, You Look How I Feel<\/em>, is made up of seemingly incongruous photographs. The first shows a fragment of a face in a mirror and the other depicts the pearl-coloured waffling of a dirty discarded mattress. Each element is a testament to an introverted enfolding reminiscent of Levinas\u2019s pronouncement on the state of solitude, that a monadic existence \u2014 with no possibility of communicating with an outside \u2014 is the condition of being. Content is incommunicable.10<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 10 <\/a> - Levinas, Time and the Other, 42.<\/span> But Martin overcomes this; she communicates with her viewer with the help of an accompanying text, a part of the work that is not a mere formal description but rather a personal pronouncement meant to interact with the visual material and the viewer\u2019s empathy. In this \u201cartist\u2019s statement,\u201d she writes: \u201cIn the literature guiding pet owners through the process of putting down an ailing animal, there is a list of questions to consider. \/ One must observe their physical state: is the animal tearing at itself? Is it missing hair? Does it hide itself away out of reach?\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n This last part is a reference to the work Prayer Spaces, in which a void of a bare scalp is compared to a church window seen from the inside of the building. The text continues, shoehorning the personal into the impersonal statement of the \u201cfound\u201d brochure, a textual equivalent to the pictorial juxtapositions of her photographic diptychs: <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI read the last questions over and over \/ Does it still like to play? \/ Does it seem happy? \/ Sometimes I observe myself in a mirror, in photographs and ask \/ Does it still like to play? Does it seem happy?\u201d The comparison between the \u201cit\u201d of the pet and the \u201cit\u201d of the self is poignant. And the joke is potent.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n A similar vein of morbid humour can be seen in a recent exhibition, OVERSHARE<\/em> (2017). Martin presents a series of 698 tiny polaroid photographs. Their ephemeral nature provides a physical equivalency to the viewer\u2019s proxy experience of landscapes, portraits, close-ups of blood-stained tissues, cats, dead animals, laughing friends, crusted silverware. Martin seems to reach for the state of contentment with bare being \u2014 an existential stasis unresponsive to others \u2014 no longer creating meaningful connections among images, but simply letting them be.11<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 11 <\/a> - Ibid., 67.<\/span> The multiplicity of the photographs exemplifies a post-postmodern aesthetic of irony or \u201cflat death.\u201d12<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 12 <\/a> - Expression attributed to Roland Barthes. Raoul Eshelman, \u201cNotes on Performatist Photography: Experiencing Beauty and Transcendence after Postmodernism,\u201d in Metamodernism: Historicity, Affect and Depth after Postmodernism, ed. Robin van den Akker, Alison Gibbons, and Timotheus Vermeulen (London: Rowman & Littlefield International, 2017), 183\u2013200.<\/span> The performatist strategy of a seemingly unedited multiplicity of images suggests a new sincerity that, instead of letting the viewer in on the joke, allows the viewer into the work at the level of feeling, which could be seen as a coercive empathy trap: \u201cWe are made to identify with some person, act or situation in a way that is plausible only within the confines of the work as a whole. In this way performatism gets to have its postmetaphysical cake and eat it too.\u201d13<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 13 <\/a> - Eshelman, \u201cPerformatism,\u201d 118.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n And once we have connected to Martin\u2019s sincerity, we are offered a treat, a relief of tension in the guise of humour, to encourage us to stay in her aesthetic universe. Sometimes, there is the promise of fictional cake, as in Days Ending in Why: \u201cI have questions \/ Questions like \/ Why me? \/ Why now? \/ and \/ Where is my cake?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Enfolded into Martin\u2019s universe, through existential angst, is a well-calibrated joke. By framing death with humour to elicit the viewer\u2019s empathy, Martin offers us an opportunity to have our cake and eat it too, albeit alone, by ourselves, but with her in mind.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/95-DO-IM_Zdebik_02Martin_YATTY-Ohitsworse-2014_CMYK-C-FLAT-scaled.jpeg\")
<\/strong>Oh it’s worse<\/em>, detail from the project You Are Talking To Yourself<\/em>, 2014.
Photo: courtesy of the artist<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/95-DO-IM_Zdebik_04Martin_YouLookHowIFeel_Diptych_2017_CMYK-scaled.jpeg\")
<\/strong>You Look How I Feel<\/em>, details from the projet Normal Wear and Tear<\/em>, 2017.
Photos: courtesy of the artist<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/95-DO-IM_Zdebik_01Martin_PrayerSpaces_Diptych_2017_CMYK-C-FLAT-scaled.jpeg\")
Prayer Spaces<\/em>, details from the projet Normal Wear and Tear<\/em>, 2017.
Photos: courtesy of the artist<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/95-DO-IM_Zdebik_01Martin_OVERSHARE-installation2017_CMYK-scaled.jpeg\")
OVERSHARE<\/em>, installation detail, PDA Projects, Ottawa, 2017.
Photos: courtesy of the artist <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n