Artist Statement: Theodore Wilkins-Lang (American, b. 1999, Cairo)
Theodore Wilkins-Lang is an American photographic artist and 2022 graduate from the GSA, currently based in Glasgow. His current project, Archive of the Other, attempts to challenge contemporary visual norms around the photographed Other, positing dramatic, present, and large-scale portraits in opposition to the digital image culture of small-scale “disposable others”.
This practice forms an extension of his wider goal to find reason and necessity for photography in this oversaturated contemporary visual landscape. Wilkins-Lang imagines a photographic surface as a productive zone of solidarity and empathy, a field of silver gelatin where new Others come into being. The face of the portrait, ever so slightly uncanny, different from its original subject, turns to the viewer and calls out to be recognised as vital and alive. The work asks the viewer to reckon with this uncanny other, and to accept it. Here Wilkins-Lang finds definition for the existentialist photography he strives towards, and where he finds, in ways, the necessity to photograph.
Photo: Natalie Wesselius, 2023, Berlin
Education:
BA (Hons) Fine Art Photography, Glasgow School of Art, Sep 2018-June 2022
Exhibitions:
New Contempories, Group Show, Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh, April 2024
2023 Scottish Portrait Awards, Group Show, Scottish Arts Club, September 2023
Eye to Paper: Paper Stage Drawing Show, Group Show, Edinburgh Palette, Edinburgh, August 2023
Futureproof, Group Show, Streetlevel Photoworks, Glasgow, November 2022
Living Room, Group Show, Old Hairdressers, Glasgow, March 2022
Crit For Wine, Trio Show, showing alongside Anouk Liewer and Joanna Stawnicka, Glasgow, March 2022
Variety at Variety, Trio Show, showing alongside Vincent Jager and Florence Peters, Variety, Glasgow, February 2022
Interim, Group Show, 16 Nicholson St, Glasgow, February 2022
Artist in Residence Exhibition, showing alongside Camilo Gonzalez Barragan, Cleveland Print Room, August 2021
Focal Points, Group Show, WASPS Studios, Glasgow, February 2020
Peer Show, Group ShowCleveland Print Room, December 2019
Pictures of Men, Pictures of Women, showing alongside Anouk Liewer, Le Salon at Overdale Avenue, November 2019
Better Late than Never…, Group Show, Richmond Building, Glasgow School of Art, May 2019
This Time Was Different, Solo Show, Encore at the Dundee Rep, August 2017
Publications Featured In:
The Wall, work featured “Final Resting Place”, Glasgow, June 2021
The Skinny Degree Show Insert, Fine Art Graduate feature, co-wrote with Amy Strzoda, Glasgow, June 2021
Residencies:
Cleveland Print Room, Artist in residence, Cleveland OH, USA, June-August 2021
Awards:
Royal Scottish Academy New Contemporary 2024