S-T-E-R-E-O-V-I-E-W
Javier Téllez in Collaboration with Patients of the Bronx Psychiatric Center
Conversations with the Permanent Collection

In the exhibition the artist and collaborators utilized selected stereoscopic cards from the Museum’s Stanley Burns Collection of nineteenth-century photographic representations of African Americans. The cards, some of which exemplify racist imagery of the era, were originally viewed in 3-D through a popular precursor of the View-Master. BPC patients added speech balloons to copies of the stereoscopic cards, some of which connect characters in the double images, and through which are filtered their experiences of suffering from mental illness.

The installation takes a sculptural form as the visitor becomes the subject. Téllez has recreated an oversized bird’s house in which you sit to view these newly animated photographs, which are accompanied by video footage of BPC-resident Gregory Smith singing James Brown's “I Feel Good.” Additional patients look out their windows with binoculars. The use of the subjective camera in the video encourages viewers to identify with the patients' gazes, which focus through the binoculars on the stereoscopic cards, creating an ambiguous space in which the watcher and the watched become confused.

The artist states, “Growing up as a son of two psychiatric doctors, I have been around mental hospitals since I was a young child. This personal experience has been a fundamental influence on my work as an artist. Since 1992, I have worked on a series of projects about mental illness, which I produced at various psychiatric institutions worldwide. These projects are often made in collaboration with mental patients, including the creation of video, photography, and sculptural installations.”

Téllez’s works have been produced in collaboration with patients at psychiatric institutions in Lima; London; Porto Alegre, Brazil; Sydney; Tokyo; Valencia, Venezuela (his hometown); and other cities. These works and others have been exhibited in the Biennial of Sydney, Australia (2004); Museo Carillo Gil, Mexico City (2004); and Venice Biennale, Italy (2003). In 1999, he was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship.

Conversations with the Permanent Collection
S-T-E-R-E-O-V-I-E-W is part of Conversations with the Permanent Collection, a series of artists' projects responding to and including works from the collection of The Bronx Museum of the Arts.

The Museum’s collection focuses on twentieth-century and contemporary works by artists of African, Asian, and Latin American ancestry. Additionally, the Museum collects works by artists for whom the Bronx has been an inspiration to their work.

About the Stanley Burns Collection
In 1986, the Bronx Museum received the first of three generous gifts from New York ophthalmologist and noted collector Dr. Stanley B. Burns. Comprised of over 350 late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century photographic portraits of African Americans, the Burns Collection represents the largest single gift of artwork ever made to the Museum for its collection. The Burns Collection’s focus on portraiture provides a compelling and valuable archive for the examination of issues of representation, race, and class among working and a burgeoning middle class of African Americans during the turn of the last century.

About the Bronx Psychiatric Center
Bronx Psychiatric Center is a 360-bed public facility located in the northeastern Bronx. The center provides a full range of inpatient services required by individuals with mental illness and substance abuse disorders.