Let's Go Out to 'Lobby': The Kennedy Center

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YOU ENTER THE INSTALLATION called "Lobby" — not a lobby but a room in the Kennedy Center's Terrace Gallery — and above you are branches spreading out in all directions, along with silhouettes of birds. Around you are faces repeated, flipped, reflected and repeated again. Watching, staring, moving if the breeze or a gallery visitor ruffles the silk curtains on which the crowd scene is printed.

It's fitting, then, that the drapery is titled "Movement" — a nice double meaning. Both kinetic and social, the movement in question is the mobilization of American voters. In fact, both halves of "Lobby" deal with American politics — strange, perhaps, considering one artist is from New Zealand and the other is Australian.

Ricky Subritzky (the Kiwi) and Fiona MacDonald (the Aussie) have collaborated before on political pieces, and Subritzky doesn't think it's strange at all for the artists to take note of America's political phenomena: "People seem a bit surprised — with New Zealand being on the other side of the world — that we're interested. But the whole world's interested." He said the installation is inspired by what he and MacDonald see as the huge changes sweeping America's political landscape; despite pundits' rumblings about party schisms and military disasters, "Lobby" is a hopeful work.

The overhead component to "Lobby" is a symmetrical, mandala-like silhouette of America's last "liberty tree" — a gathering place used by American revolutionaries — which was felled in 1999 due to instability. (It will be hard for artists to find a more neatly gift-wrapped metaphor than this.) To install the work, the Kennedy Center had to essentially lower the ceiling and place the plastic tiles into a grid made for this exhibit. The result is what Subritzky describes as an intimate space. The effect is of a quiet, temple-like space, "a meditative space," where viewers can sit and contemplate the meaning of liberty in America in the 21st century.

"Lobby" is part of "Derivative Composition," an international juried exhibit sponsored by VSA Arts for artists with disabilities; Subritzky is hearing impaired. In the exhibition catalog, he writes that his deafness makes him more attuned to the interpretation of symbols. For Subritzky and MacDonald, the liberty tree is a powerful symbol, though few Americans are familiar with it.

"I think this installation underlines what's good about democracy, when it's working. It's been fascinating to watch the primaries and see people mobilize. ... When I got here last week, the cabdriver immediately started in on a political conversation."

» Kennedy Center, 2700 F St. NW; through July 17, free; 202-467-4600. (Foggy Bottom-GWU)

Written by Express contributor Rachel Kaufman
Photo courtesy VSA Arts