Shary Boyle and Emily Duke: The Illuminations Project

by Briana Giasullo

 On January 13^th, 2011, I visited the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania for an opening. I was immediately captivated by a series of poems and paintings in one of the rooms. The first painting I saw was titled “I Want to be Afraid of Nature,” an ink and gouache on paper by Shary Boyle. Accompanying the image was a short poem by Emily Duke that vaguely related to the colorful yet violent scene of a girl being attacked by a number of wild animals. I do not remember exactly how the poem went, but it described the fear people once had for the mysterious natural world that has been replaced by today’s sense of man being able to control and manipulate nature. The author wants to return to the lost sense of fear and respect for the natural world, relating to the image of a human being destroyed by nature rather than nature being destroyed by humans.

Shary Boyle, "I Want to be Afraid of Nature," 2003, ink and gouache on paper

 As I walked around the room I soon realized that while all of the images visually resembled children’s book illustrations, the content would never be found in a children’s book. One painting titled “The Island of Animal Laughter” appears cute and lighthearted at first, but upon closer inspection the menacing animals laughing on the island made me a bit nervous. Another vibrant painting was displayed next to a poem that declared “we’ll eat your soul with spoons.” I also noticed that while some of the poems accurately described the scene they accompanied, others were more abstract and only hinted at being a part of the painting. The vague relationships between the poems and paintings were created deliberately by Shary Boyle and Emily Duke. The two artists wanted to collaborate on a project in which they did not set any rules on the content. They wanted to use each other’s work as jumping off points rather than distinct outlines. Through long-distance correspondence between 2003 and 2010, Boyle would send a painting to Duke who responded with a poem. Alternately, Duke would first write the poem and Boyle responded with a painting. The exhibit is set up so that whichever came first, the painting or the poem, is displayed on the left side and the response is displayed on the right. The artists want the viewers to question the relationship between text and image. 

Shary Boyle, "The Island of Animal Laughter," ink and gouache on paper

 The illustrative nature of the paintings creates a tension with their dark and violent content. Vibrant, almost rainbow-colored scenes depict children dancing in the forest as massive explosions occur right behind them. Another painting displays rainbow colored liquids spilling from holes in a girl’s body. A continuing narrative in the poems between a boy and a girl named Peg-Leg and Bloody defies expectations of a love story when the two characters become disgusted by each other. The images resemble illuminated manuscripts of the middle ages but their content is much more surreal and almost political. One painting is titled “Soldiers Aren’t Afraid of Blood” and shows an explosion of blood and female body parts, creating a surreal child-like image of war. Overall, the exhibit is both beautiful and disturbing and gave me a new sense of respect for poetry, which usually tends to bore me. The project I am currently working on strives for the same balance of naïve imagery with dark content.

Shary Boyle, "Soldiers Aren't Afraid of Blood," 2005, ink and gouache on paper