18 Dec 2017

Carmen Papalia: Open Access: Practicing Accessibility Together

Gallery 344, City Hall Annex

Reviewed by Franklin Einspruch

Carmen Papalia is blind, and his art has him setting up public scenarios - duly recorded - in which he makes adventuresome changes to his usual habits of navigation. Two videos by the artist are on display at Gallery 344. In one he trades his red-tipped cane for a megaphone, announcing to anyone nearby that he needs help getting across a street. It doesn't work out so well.

In the other video he has exchanged his cane for a high school marching band, instructed to play various tunes depending on whether the way is clear or blocked, level or uneven. He is able to enter a bodega and order a soda, accompanied by tubas and cymbals.

Papalia plays it for laughs, but the piece has genuine vulnerability in it, and not just in the respect that he might fall down a curb. A poem printed on the wall and floor divides the gallery, noting "your palms / hold reference / to gates / to walls and woodgrain." It testifies to experiences seen by unusual means, but thorough ones.