VICTORIA
CRAYHON
From the United States. Lives and works in Providence, RI, USA.
It Says We’re Not Real and Other Thoughts on Romance from the Road
Thoughts on Romance from the Road uses photography to document Victoria Crayhon’s text interventions on roadside marquee signs. By placing intimate, diaristic language in public view this work also explores the contemporary impulse to overly share our innermost thoughts and vulnerabilities. Crayhon places phrases on movie and motel marquee signs, using her own sign letters and then leaving the scene with the words left intact. Before she departs, Crayhon makes a photograph from the sidewalk or roadside. The photograph becomes the sole remnant of the project as the letters inevitably disappear or are taken down.
In its brief existence, each sign installation is read by an audience encountering the work in spaces where they expect to see advertisements or movie titles. The text phrases are the voice of an individual and are deliberately personal and vaguely melancholy – a sharp contrast to the upbeat advertisements and romantic or promising (of excitement or laughter for example) movie titles typically seen on these signs. Victoria Crayhon’s texts are formulated to read as though they are public diary entries referencing banal realities of self and relationships based on comparison with an ideal.
