ART + SCIENCE: Mikayla Whitmore

ART + SCIENCE: Mikayla Whitmore by Linda AlterwitzOctober 4, 2016

©Mikayla Whitmore, Sidney

Mikayla Whitmore is a multi-media artist based in Nevada. Her photographs from the series When the Night Comes explore human memory in the form of an interactive installation and still photographs. In the installation (which was exhibited at the P3Studio at the Cosmopolitan Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada) she projected light that had been manipulated and combined with overlooked objects. The still images were captured during the installation and afterward in her studio. Each photograph combined multiple photos into a single image. The people and places seem out of time, yet somehow familiar, as if teetering on the edge of one’s recollection.

Whitmore is fascinated by the concept that memories are based on past recollections, continually breaking down and altering information as time passes. By tapping into this complex world of human memory, she has created an essence of rich experience portrayed by fragmented, skewed imagery that literally stretches over shapes and travels through time.

Mikayla Whitmore, Las Vegas native and UNLV graduate, has exhibited at multiple venues including P3Studio at the Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas, Contemporary Arts Center, and the Marjorie Barrick Museum. Her work explores the potential of the photographic image in an attempt to explore the way memory functions. During her solo residency ‘When the Night Comes’ she functioned as an archivist of memories seeking to re-order phantasmal visual instances in time. She currently balances her studio practice with work as a staff photographer, researching dinosaur species, and planting succulents.

©Mikayla Whitmore, It’s Time

When the Night Comes

Every day our mind is recording and cataloguing new information and experiences – at the same time old memories start to fade, corrupt, and blend together. As such, memories can no longer be safeguarded in precious photographic objects. We can longer distinguish between reality and the self-indulged perception we form from piecing things together. Instead, images act as palimpsests where memory and identity are constantly being lost. Photography too functions as passages of ancient manuscripts where the ink of words bleeds onto the next page to the point of loosing any trace of narrative. I seek to fill the gaps in time where words become forms, and where photographic reminiscences turn into abstract images.