Hole in the Curtain (2015 - 2016)
In this work Souders taps into the burlesque of humanity, depicting characters that blur the line between biographical and fictive. Souders creates her latest works with bleach, photographic chemistry and watercolors using unexposed film emulsion as a substrate. Souders writes, “I approach the emulsion as a vulnerable skin, subject to constant transformation.” Consistent with her earlier project, Film Electric, these images record a fleeting materiality. The bleach and chemistry rapidly degrade the film, and are thus a purposeful incubator of chance occurrences--fissures in emulsion, selective lightening, bored holes, color shifts, breached borders. While in process, Souders’ works exist in a state of timed decline. Her portraits demonstrate a humorously expressive quality, yet, as with her earlier work, there exists a certain weight, apparent in the dark spaces, in the various rents in the emulsion that open up to what looks like a wide starry sky.
