Valerie Piraino - Waking Up in Ruins (detail)

Valerie Piraino

I have an intense curiosity about how the past impacts the present, particularly family history. I make installations and sculptures that center around a large collection of family slides. I create fragmented, domestic spaces by using drywall, wallpaper, and furniture. These spaces serve as sets that I project the slides into. I often use materials with strong nostalgic associations, such as aging slides or wallpaper. These installations are heightened and dramatized by using colored lights and disjunctive modes of projection. I create fragmented family portraits that rely on impressions, not facts, estrangement because of a psychologically fraught past, not comfort in an embellished nostalgia. I want to tap into the complex role-playing between a husband and wife, a father and son and the external and internal self. I want to give form to the nuanced relationships that determine a family, particularly the generations characterized by emotional restraint. Because of that, there is always a frustrated element to my work. The slides are typically overlapping, upside-down, or backwards, making a coherent image impossible to see. These images are fleeting, adding up to a displaced and imaginative narrative.