Page 44 - AHATA

Aruba Photo Room Presents Museum: A Haunted

Medium, featuring artists Paula Pedrosa, Traer

Scott, and Andrés Wertheim

JANUARY 16, 2020 LEAVE A COMMENT

Oranjestad, Aruba –The Talk of the Town Hotel & Beach Club in collaboration with the Art Museum of
the Americas presents Museum: A Haunted Medium, an exhibition of work by photographers Paula
Pedrosa (Brazil), Traer Scott (United States), and Andrés Wertheim (Argentina). In these works, natural
history and art museums, gallery spaces, and theme parks all become mediums, encouraging interactions.
Grand expectations are resolved by the magic of communication that occurs in the dialog between the
viewer and the viewed. Scott captures the interaction between the ghostlike human reflection on the glass
and the frozen motion of animals as part of ornate wildlife landscapes. Pedrosa depicts staged, cripplingly
decorated interior jungle-like and rainforest landscapes painted onto interior surfaces, fantasies creating
expectations of life as it may be. Wertheim forges fusions between the audiences in the museum and the
portrayed characters in the same spaces’ galleries. Interactions throughout, between the living and the
dead, the past and the present, and natural and artificial, contextualized amid the fleetingness of existence,
reveals that it is perhaps we who are more truly ghosts in the museum.
These three artists: Paula Pedrosa, Brazil; Traer Scott, U.S.; and Andrés Wertheim, Argentina; wander
into museums looking to capture the visitor’s interaction with museum pieces and dioramas, creating a
new piece where this interaction manifests itself in a haunted image. Natural history and art museums,
gallery spaces, and theme parks are all mediums which encourage interactions that, in turn, create
expectations. These grand expectations are resolved by the magic of communication that occurs in the
dialogue between the viewer and the viewed.

Medium is described by the dictionary as simply a middle state; something that is intermediate between
two qualities or degrees. It can also mean a person or an object that acts as an intermediary; channel or
conduit of communication. As Traer Scott says, “every image is like solving a mystery that I didn’t know
existed.” Scott captures the interaction between the human ghostlike reflection on the glass and the frozen
motion of animals in action as part of ornate wildlife landscapes of the natural history dioramas.
In Paula Pedrosa’s images, interactions between the natural and artificial as seen in dioramas of wildlife
are captured. These scenes depict staged and cripplingly decorated interior jungle-like and rain-forest
landscapes painted on walls, glass, windows, and doors. These fantasies are reinforced by fake rock
formations and props, creating expectations based on the fantasy of the recreation of life as it was.