We interpreted photographer Natalie Christensen’s body of work, Deconstructed Self, creating an interpretive experience that guides participants through the results of her application of a modernist aesthetic, where images are broken apart and revealed as color fields, geometry, and shadow, each designed to explore psychological space. The experience unfolds in different iterations as it travels to other venues, each with unique programming, layouts, and audiences.

The photographs she takes, and edits, ask questions of the viewer: What could be around that corner? Through that door? Up there? On the other side? The participants’ acts of self-driven discovery (and all that is dredged up in the making and observing of the work) is what we sought to accentuate in the sometimes atypical framing and placing of the project’s photographs. Some of the images are framed on only two or three sides, hinting at the uncompletedness of the participants’ assumptions, and the need to pause in an effort to grasp fully what we’re experiencing, and perhaps (and hopefully) why. The varying heights at which we hung the pieces, and the attendant intentionality of guiding the eye and attention of the participant higher or lower or around that corner, were designed to shift and interrogate our assumptions while noticeably deconstructing expectations.