Carlin Wing: Ceilings Where I Sleep (2005-2010)

Colour photographs, formats and dimensions variable.
Images courtesy the artist and Anthony Greaney Gallery, Boston.

For the past five years, Carlin Wing has been photographing the ceilings above the places where she has spent at least one night during the last five years. Ceilings Where I Sleep (2005-2010) is a collection of 130 photographs shot in various formats (analog and digital, even cell phones) and locations (hotels, friend and family homes) that capture the view she may have had while dozing off at night or waking in the morning.

In Ceilings, Wing captures the cheap spackle, inexpensive light fixtures and colourful curtains of her surroundings, but viewers are not privy to the emotional content behind them. Rather, viewers are left to ask questions: What is the artist’s relationship to the owner of this space? Was she happy to be staying there? What were the circumstances of her visit? And, of course, was the artist sleeping alone? While Wing may have taken these photos, she does not see herself as their exclusive author. The people who own these spaces play a significant role in the images’ contents, of course, but it is up to viewers to activate the photos’ emotional content, drawing upon their own memories and feelings of sleeping in such places — a nondescript hotel in a small town, surfing a friend’s sofa, or staying overnight at their grandparents’ home.

Like Ed Ruscha and his serial views of Los Angeles parking lots shot from above, Wing’s lens creates an interesting narrative out of spaces that many experience but barely register.

Carlin Wing is an American photographer and video artist who attended Harvard and the California Institute of the Arts, from which she received her Master’s degree. Ceilings Where I Sleep was shown in May and June, 2010 at Anthony Greaney, Boston.