In a series of images which the artist captures as she wanders through the streets of the city and documents its signage through a systematic photographic approach that is uniquely her own, Ulay reveals the evidence of “the present” with all of its repetitions, similarities, discards, and current purposings. As she does so, the otherwise sharp distinction between “a city” and “every city” becomes increasingly blurred: the signals that her photographs reveal begin to point to a completely different, inner space of their own. This is a space that has a self-consistent language, a fraught backstory, and intrinsic connections that all need to be considered in their own right.
The presentation of the images in this show confronts the viewer as an additional dimension of their content. The variability, ephemerality, and vulnerability of urban surfaces and volumes are reflected in the photographic prints pinned to the walls of the exhibition venue: the exhibition technique echo the way the city mounts its own “natural” exhibition.