Nancy Baker Cahill solo show at PMCA

Pasadena Museum of California Art Project Room:
Nancy Baker Cahill: Fascinomas
January 22 - May 20, 2012

“Fascinoma” is medical jargon for an unusual case or diagnosis. This installation presents imaginary fascinomas—growths, invaders, reactions. Alluding to the visual languages of electron microscopy, ultrasound and prehistoric cave paintings, the paintings investigate ways of attempting to know the unknown.

An animated sequence of paintings is projected onto a scrim. The viewer, becoming both site and actor, may walk around and through the projected fascinomas, integrating the micro and macro cosmoses.

Fascinomas explores the quiet and implied violence of things that are in the body, but not necessarily of the body. They are rendered to resist specific categorization, and to underscore the limitations of language and science to describe phenomena (such as pain, emotion, and memory) that cannot be physically observed, but are nonetheless felt.

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