Work samples
About Lynn
Lynn Cazabon's work has been exhibited internationally in solo and group exhibitions with Maryland Center for History and Culture (Baltimore, MD), National Museum of Contemporary Art (Bucharest, Romania), Tsung-Yeh Arts and Cultural Center (Tainan, Taiwan), South Bend Museum of Art (South Bend, IN), WRO Art Center (Wrocław, Poland), Govett-Brewster Art Gallery (New Plymouth, New Zealand), The Mattress Factory (Pittsburgh, PA), Artists Space (New York, NY), Hallwalls… more
Losing Winter
Site-specific multimedia participatory art project, AR mobile app
Losing Winter is a site-specific, participatory artwork and archive of memories and emotions about winter, revealing the personal and cultural ties we have to the season and providing a window onto what we are collectively losing due to climate change impacts on weather patterns. The project is realized through site-specific exhibitions, collaborations with the public, and an augmented reality mobile application. Losing Winter was first realized with the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Bucharest, Romania in 2018. In addition to the recorded memories, the project in Bucharest included Melt, a video featuring a series of unique ice sculptures created in response to memories contributed by participants positioned in key locations in and around the museum. Losing Winter has since been realized in several other iterations, including at the Maryland Center for History and Culture (Baltimore, MD, 2021 - 23) and at the Oresman Gallery at Smith College (Northampton, MA, 2022). The Losing Winter mobile app is the project archive and invites users to experience the memories of others through an augmented reality display. Holding up a mobile device, users see a shower of rain drops overlaid onto the scene in which they are standing. Tapping on the screen freezes drops of virtual water and tapping a second time enlarges a single drop, revealing a person frozen inside who begins to speak, telling you about their memory. As they complete their story, they disappear and the ice drop melts, turning back into water and falling out the bottom of the frame.
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Losing WinterAn example of memories as viewed through the Losing Winter AR mobile app at The Peale Museum in Baltimore, MD.
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Losing WinterFour memories from realization of Losing Winter for Oresman Gallery at Smith College, 2022. This iteration of the project resulted in a mediated intergenerational dialogue between communities of people aged 60+ in Springfield, MA and Smith College theatre students.
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Losing WinterAn example of one memory as viewed through the Losing Winter AR mobile app in the Losing Winter exhibition at the Maryland Center for History and Culture.
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MELT4K video that is part of the project as realized with the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Bucharest, Romania (2018). The video features ice sculptures created to represent selected memories placed in key locations inside and outside the museum in the process of melting.
Uncultivated
Site-specific artwork, geo-referenced photographs, public displays, website, workshops
http://uncultivated.infoUncultivated is a site-specific, scalable art project focused on wild plants within urban landscapes. The project draws attention to plant species that are typically rejected as weeds but which are able to thrive in the harsh conditions we have created in cities and are increasingly found around the world. Each photograph has a corresponding webpage containing detailed information on all the plants appearing in them, the location, and the date it was taken. Public displays show images taken in the vicinity of the display venue and workshops are hosted in collaboration with the local communities in which the project is realized.
Ecomimesis
Virtual reality environment
Ecomimesis is a VR environment containing animated virtual plants that offers viewers an intimate encounter with growing plants in an accelerated life-cycle. The species featured is Conyza canadensis, a common urban ‘weed’ chosen for its prevalence in human crafted landscapes that is at same time often 'invisible' to most people as they choose to ignore such so-called nuisance species. Ecomimesis was inspired by Charles Darwin's The Power of Movement in Plants in which Darwin documents his observations of how plants move as they grow.
Diluvian
Unique gelatin silver solar photograms
The images in the Diluvian series were created using expired black and white photographic paper and lengthy solar exposures. These unique cameraless, contact prints feature shadowy images of discarded electronics, which persist in the environment long after their obsolescence, juxtaposed with organic materials, highlighting their vastly different rates of decay.
Baltic Portraits
Photographs and text
Baltic Portraits is a trilingual project situated at the intersection between the genres of portraiture and landscape. The project consists of a series of fifty portraits of residents of Liepaja, Latvia, standing at the edge of the Baltic Sea displayed with a quote about the role the sea plays in their lives, along with eight long-exposure photographs of the sea taken just after sunset. Latvia is one of the three Baltic countries, with a complex history of occupation by Nazi Germany and the USSR for a majority of the 20th century. The Baltic Sea forms Latvia's border on its western side while Russia borders its eastern side. With tensions with Russia currently erupting across the region, the Baltic Sea is a visible reminder of the vulnerability of this small country.
Portrait Garden
Photograph, text, audio, community collaboration
Portrait Garden is a metaphorical garden of 'portraits' of eleven women incarcerated at Maryland Correctional Institution for Women, a multilevel security prison. Portrait Garden used environmental stewardship as a tool for self-reflection and resulted in the creation of three perennial gardens on the prison grounds. The display of the project consists of a collection of photographic prints of the cultivated plants paired with text and audio statements from each woman.
Junkspace
Time and location sensitive animation, custom software
Junkspace is a time and location sensitive animation that dynamically visualizes space debris tracking data, using images of earth-bound electronic waste as stand-ins for debris in orbit above the viewer. Using custom software, orbital debris tracking data, and the user’s location, the movement of animated e-waste on screen aligns with the path of pieces of debris in orbit above the user’s location. The project draws attention to a central problem of technological innovation: objects that persist in the environment long after their functional and stylistic obsolescence. The project originally also existed as an iOS app.
Discard
Pigment ink jet prints and Fuji Crystal Archive prints
Discard is a body of work consisting of several discrete series of photographic prints featuring movie films discarded by public institutions (libraries, schools, archives). Harking back to the 19th century practice of postmortem photography, each print serves as a memento mori to an obsolete film. More generally, the series reflects on the often arbitrary process that determines whether cultural artifacts are preserved or discarded.
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reelreel (digital video, 2 mins 46 sec) shows a profile view of a film reel in fast motion while the audio is in real time. As the film becomes progressively smaller on the reel, the light behind the projector gets brighter, de-materializing and optically transforming the image of the reel as it turns. The singular nature of the image produces a zen-like meditation on the materiality of film and its obsolescence as a representational technology.
Story of M
Story of M presents the viewer with fragmented details (images, sounds, films) of an anonymous man’s life across several decades of time. These various elements set the stage for multiple narratives to be constructed – the shape of any one story reflecting back to the viewer their own subjective “M”. The viewer's movement in the second room of the installation randomly triggers one of 200 audio clips to play, incorporating them into the shaping of the work.