Double Bind
Extended conversation between artist Leigh Ledare and art historian Rhea Anastas exploring Ledare's "Double Bind" installation, presented at The Box (Los Angeles, 2012) and Mitchell-Innes & Nash (New York, 2014). The publication documents their dialogue provoked by viewing the work, examining key concepts that structure both this project and Ledare's broader practice. Arranged in six thematic sections—viewing, systemic conditions, enactment, installation and mass media, genealogy, and affect—the book models "affective criticism" that responds across intimate and collective scales of artwork and viewership.
Ledare's "Double Bind" installation presents nearly one thousand photographs of the artist's ex-wife: half taken by Ledare, half by her current husband, according to a script conceived by Ledare and enacted by all three participants. These photographs are juxtaposed with a large collection of appropriated mass-media materials, creating overlaying comparative structures that investigate contradictions within cultural, psychological, and sexual dimensions of intimacy and heterosexual relationships. The work explores how personal relationships and representations exist within larger systemic and ideological frameworks.
The book features installation photography created exclusively by Ledare for publication, documenting the 2014 Mitchell-Innes & Nash exhibition. Anastas's introduction and Ledare's preface frame the dialogue, which unfolds as critical examination of the viewing experience and theoretical implications of the work. A chronology of "Double Bind" exhibitions and publications provides documentary context for the project's development across multiple iterations. The conversation format allows both participants to test ideas about social and aesthetic experience within an unfolding exchange.
Published by A.R.T. Press (A.rt R.esources T.ransfer) in 2015. Softcover, 6 × 9 inches, 264 pages. ISBN: 978-0-923183-50-9. Edited by Alejandro Cesarco with assistance from Kylie Gilchrist. Design by Kristian Henson (HWGL). Rhea Anastas is art historian and Professor at University of California, Irvine. Leigh Ledare's work examines social structures, intimacy, and representation through photography, installation, and conceptual practice. A Brooklyn Rail excerpt from the book appeared in February 2016.