Lois Bielefeld

School of Art, Photo/Media, MFA2

To commit to memory

To commit to memory is work delving into my parent’s life, particularly their conservative Evangelical traditions and how this plays out within the home. The genesis for this series was a video piece I made of my mom’s daily 13-minute plank while reciting memorized Bible verses. After completing the video in March 2020, I questioned what does it mean for me, an atheist and queer artist, to share work about deep devotion/faith? Being on different ends of the political spectrum, my parents and I constantly straddle a wide ideology chasm yet somehow, we negotiate and bridge our differences through this project. I’m interested in how the labor of looking can be a type of active listening that leads to understanding. This has led to this in-depth series looking at their complex personhood. Through photographic re-enactments, I examine domesticity, power relations, ritual, faith, aging and memory.