MELISSA SHIFf (1967-2025)
A retrospective exhibition will be announced.
Iconoclash
Iconoclash was commissioned for Toronto's Nuit Blanche, 2007. A 40 foot screen was hung in Grange Park and a dance floor was set up. The audience is superimposed into the video projection and asked to ponder the meaning of iconic vs. uniconic religions.
The audience is superimposed into this video projection and asked to ponder the meaning of iconic vs uniconic religions.
The audience is superimposed into this video projection and asked to ponder the meaning of iconic vs uniconic religions.
​This installation took its queue from Bruno Latour's volume of the same name. Here, Shiff boldly shows examples of religions that ban representations of God, such as Judaism and Islam, and juxtaposes them with iconophilic religions such as Hinduism and Christianity. The viewer is then inserted into this video, and, suddenly, is in the position of dancing within a culture clash. Is one pro-idol worship or against it? Shiff makes these statements to show that these are all constructs and that there is no right answer. She turns religion on its head by creating a rave out of the imagery and, in this way, she is posing the question: “if anything is put to music, is it the music that is the key to transcendence or god?” .
From Latour’s book, ICONOCLASH: “Moving beyond the image wars, ICONOCLASH shows that image destruction has always coexisted with a cascade of image production, visible in traditional Christian images as well as in scientific laboratories and the various experiments of contemporary art, music, cinema, and architecture. While iconoclasts have struggled against icon worshippers, another history of iconophily has always been at work. Investigating this alternative to the Western obsession with image worship and destruction allows useful comparisons with other cultures, in which images play a very different role."
Credits
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Artist: Melissa Shiff
Curator: Michelle Jacques
Photoshop: Matthew Pereira