Watch a recording of the virtual screening of Non-Verbal Secret Confession Booth by Jenna Maurice, including an introduction with the artist.
Jenna Maurice is interested in the human experience and making connections through non-verbal communication. Non-Verbal Secret Confession Booth asks the subjects (strangers) to think of a secret that they have been keeping from a specific person, and then imagine a situation where they confessed that secret to that person they have been keeping it from. What follows is a silent representation of that conversation played out in their minds while peering into the lens. By using the camera as a portal through which to enact these situations, the viewer is dropped into an intimate situation where small gestures and facial expressions are the only communication tools with which to make a connection.
Just as the current exhibition, Stories We Tell: The Collection Two Ways, in the Clyfford Still Museum asks viewers to interpret the work in different ways based on curation (chronological vs. thematic), this work also asks the viewer to interpret and connect with these “secret confessions” based on personal experience, culture, and individual readings of non-verbal communication cues. This work is an attempt to find simple common connections as well as empathy through observing a stranger in silence.