Sarah Angelucci : provenance unknown

“Photography provides a record of history but also offers a unique mode of storytelling. But what happens when the history of a photograph is forgotten or when no one is left to tell its story and darkness is all that remains? In Provenance Unknown, Toronto-based artist Sara Angelucci offers a space of contemplation between what is knowable about the human form in the photograph, and what can be imagined from the other side. Provenance Unknown brings together two new bodies of work: The Anonymous Chorus and Aviary, both inspired by found, anonymous, and unattributed photographic portraits that the artist purchased on eBay. These works represent a distinct shift in the artist’s practice. Here, Angelucci moves away from exploring the familiar to interrogating the anonymous and from investigating her own identity and family lineage to tracing the histories of others. Throughout this eccentric inquiry into the “liveness” of the photographic portrait, she performs as well the role of amateur historian, but to very different ends. In these works, she mixes analogue sources and digital techniques, and works across disciplines through collaboration with composers, singers, and ornithologists. The Anonymous Chorus and Aviary open a temporally suspended space between past and present, where the subjects of these “lost” portraits may come to life, once again, in a new state of being that transcends their roles as artifacts of a former time. ” -- publisher's websit