Your Attention, Please: Curatorial Statement

• Published: June 1st, 2025

In an age simultaneously augmented and fragmented by pings and likes, breaking news and bank alerts, where do we place our focus? Distractions surround us, both real and virtual. Amidst this jockeying for our attention, what takes precedence?

In her recent book, Disordered Attention, art historian and critic Claire Bishop writes, “How we define attention is inextricably connected to how we conceive of ourselves as human subjects.” If our focus is a reflection of self, our priorities, and ultimately, our identity, how might this awareness lead to a reorientation of self? “Tell me to what you pay attention and I will tell you who you are,” wrote Spanish philosopher Jose Ortega y Gasset.

Your Attention, Please considers attention from many angles, not the least of which is identity. The exhibition invites the viewer to reflect on sensory overload, societal labels, binary thinking, interruption, virtual gratification, and movement–but then provides space for quiet contemplation. W.H. Auden wrote, “Choice of attention–to pay attention to this and ignore that–is to the inner life what choice of action is to the outer. In both cases, [one] is responsible for [their] choice and must accept the consequences, whatever they may be.” In its entirety, this show is a microcosm of the surfeit of choices that face us, the various pursuits that pull us, distract us, define us — and compel us to pay attention.

But what happens when we are so inundated that choice becomes overwhelming? Shannon Cleere’s 2D work reflects upon our daily exposure to an overload of news, often with conflicting messages. The effort to filter true from not true, important from throw-away, carries a numbing weight. Her work underscores the mental and emotional labor required to stay informed while protecting one’s well-being. Where does one find space to process and reflect?

Julie Graves Krishnaswami’s research-based work investigates interruptions as a potential place for reflection, seen in the context of the justice system. Her work Do You Have An Opinion on the Series of Interruptions? uses text sourced from court opinions, the words oriented in a way that drives the viewer’s eye in unexpected directions. This interruption causes a shift in attention, calls for the recentering. This pause needn’t be negative; rather, a pause can be an interlude that leaves space for silence or noise, a mind shift, a change in perspective, or even personal growth.

Combining listening as a practice with a deeper consideration of silence and noise, Kevin Gilmore created focusonus in response to the idea of “paying attention” in a culture bombarded by visual and sonic information. His work offers a chance to experience moments of frenetic granular synthesis, as well as the cessation of those sounds, in moments of quiet and meditation. Snippets from Thich Nhat Hanh (“mindfulness brings concentration, concentration brings insight”) are read aloud, combining with scrolling social media and a backdrop of tones and harmonics sampled from family life. Gilmore’s organic sound vessels provide sublime contrast to the noise, a means of containing while maintaining.

While Gilmore uses sound to shape awareness, lens-based artist Jamie Hahn invites viewers into attention through visual subtlety. Her film work gives viewers the opportunity to approach the idea of attention using subtlety and color beside moments of emotional quiet. Softly blurred shapes pull a body into the present. Rather than directing attention outside or inside the body, this work offers a means to integrate and embrace bodily presence.

Susan Snipes approaches attention from another angle. Screens provide an experience less about a personal present and more about the repeating now of others. In her multi-screen work Now Streaming: Someone Else’s Life, the viewer observes, in turn, other viewers, locked on loop in screens watching yet other screens. On these screens, people are both present and absent, some playing, some watching, living through the recorded living of others. We’re reminded that this is an artifice of screens. This vicarious living through other people’s lived experiences is, Plato’s cave-like, only a reflection of the real world. In her media installation, Snipes contemplates the shift in attention from active participation to passive observation. What does it mean to experience life by watching rather than engaging directly?

Jamie Zimchek’s five-frame installation, Crime and Punishment, also uses digital screens to ponder attention and disattention in the context of childhood. However, Zimchek’s focus is on the physical: the fidgets and self-soothing movements that often carry over from a long school day into adult work life. This multimedia piece examines the complicated relationship between movement as a means to focus attention by some and a distraction — and a punishable offense — by others. This duality serves as a reminder that biological wiring, when reinterpreted through binary thinking — this is good, this is bad — can lead to a lack of understanding and a misrepresentation of truth.

Inherited biological and societal labels are equally connected to social expression, a subject c. marquez attends to using carefully cropped parts of a tall tumbleplant. Their sculptural wall installation invites viewers to think on the relationship between chromosomes and sex determination. By omitting the 23rd chromosomal pair, the work prompts viewers to reimagine humanity beyond societal labels that often seek to relegate life to oversimplified binaries.

Carol Langley’s installation similarly reflects on societal constructs. How do certain social behaviors attract or demand attention? Selfies are reframed—trapped in glass and exposed on both sides, performative and constructed images of self. We curate how we want others to see us, but do they see us in return? Or do they, in their self-fixated contexts simply see themselves? The selfie is artificial and removed, just as the glass adds a level of separation, exposing the selfies as specious specimens. Does anyone see through it?

The exhibition closes on a note of invitation. Essayist Anne Lamott writes, “I am going to try to pay attention to the spring. I am going to look around at all the flowers, and look up at the hectic trees. I am going to close my eyes and listen.” With Your Attention, Please, eight contemporary artists invite us to do the same: to look around, to look up, to close our eyes, to see through the blur, and to listen. So please, try to pay attention.

Susan Snipes
Jamie Zimchek
June 2025