Rachel Loischild: Quarantine Islands

Loischild’s large format photographs draw us into expanses of largely undeveloped landscapes while offering fleeting glimpses of the wider world beyond the frame. For over a decade, she has been exploring how history imprints itself on the land in her global study of quarantine islands. This exhibition offers an interdisciplinary approach to understanding places that represent a legacy of disease, “othering,” and contentious immigration policies. Traces of those legacies remain on the land long after the people are gone.

Loischild’s photographs, mixed media collages, and sculptural objects offer an interdisciplinary approach to understanding our relationship with the land and its legacy.  In her statement on the series, she notes how each site is “imbued with invisible histories, [and] serve as a tangible link to a past where public health measures, while crucial in controlling diseases like smallpox, disproportionately burdened those quarantined.”  This is not a foreign feeling, as we all had our own quarantine experiences during the 2020 pandemic; when panic, uncertainty, forced containment, and social isolation was not history, but reality.  Her series reminds us that the land holds memory, beautiful places have borne witness to horrifying human behavior, and history cannot be forgotten.

Please join us at an opening reception for the exhibition, Saturday, February 7, 6;00-8:00. Free and open to the public. Register here.