Michelle Weidman

Ajna Lichau’s video installation “Dominion,” which just closed on Saturday at the Tribute gallery (625 NW Everett #102), explored the representation of control and resignation without being polemical.

The video, composed of a single shot, was mostly filled with dense foliage. The only action in the frame was the face and shoulders of the artist and an anonymous hand that alternated between gently caressing and brutally pulling her hair. The barely on-scene face of the artist was continuously forced down to the bottom edge of the projection where it threatened to disappear from view altogether.

Her facial expression hinted at moments of anguish and dull acceptance. The combination of the shot and the incomprehensible position of the figures made the interaction nearly illegible. The question that the video poses becomes who or what is being controlled and what is the nature of the power being exerted.

The video has some parallels with Andy Warhol’s “Blow Job” that was recently on view in an edited form at Reed College’s Cooley gallery. What connects these videos is the ambiguity of the off screen action and frustrating uncertainty of the state of the onscreen subject. In “Blow Job,” the implication of a sex act is frustrated by the inability to verify and therefore participate in the act itself, as is presumably the goal of pornography.

With the title “Dominion,” Lichau implies a power structure and some brand of struggle but gives few clues about the nature of the interaction. In the same way that Warhol frustrates the pleasure seeking ability of the pornographic viewer Lichau frustrates our ability to identify with or judge the figures in the video. Rather than being able to assume a role in, or participate in the narrative of the power struggle we are left searching for hints of pleasure and pain that would allow for the assumption or prescription of a hierarchical power relationship. It is precisely this disavowal that gives “Dominion” its power.

Originally published on August 24, 2010 at Ultrapdx.com. Direct URL: http://www.ultrapdx.com/zero/2010/08/24/review-dominion/