To See Your Face

For the exhibition "Talking Pictures: Camera-Phone Conversations Between Artists" (June 27 – Dec 17, 2017), The Met commissioned a group of artists to conduct visual dialogues on their mobile phones. Initially, twelve artists were invited to participate in the project. Each invited another artist to be his or her conversation partner. Over the course of five months, from November 2016 to April 2017, the pairs sent photographs and brief videos back and forth in a game of pictorial ping-pong. They were asked not to type messages or captions, and to refrain from sharing the images on social media, but the content and frequency of communication was otherwise determined entirely by the artists.

The twelve unabridged conversations were displayed in a variety of formats: on monitors and touch screens, as projected images, in printed books, and as prints pinned to the wall. The installation was conceived as an experiment and springboard for further discussion. At the conclusion of the exhibition, the artists’ dialogues were acquired for The Met permanent collection.

Shortly before they began exchanging images, Sharma contacted Rozovsky to let her know that she was pregnant and due to give birth in early April. To her surprise, Rozovsky confessed that she was also pregnant and due a few weeks earlier. The resulting dialogue beautifully chronicles the changes the artists experienced—both inside and out—during their last two trimesters, ending with images of their newborns.