Photo: Nicholas Pfosi, A16

AFTERIMAGE

Three for the Show

A trio of visitors to the Tisch Gallery view In a Room Full of Strangers, a three-channel video installation from the series Seat Assignment, by the Brooklyn-based conceptual artist Nina Katchadourian. “While in the lavatory on a domestic flight in March 2010, I spontaneously put a tissue-paper toilet-seat cover over my head and took a picture in the mirror using my cell phone,” Katchadourian has written. “The image evoked fifteenth-century Flemish portraiture.” Today, after more than 149 flights, Seat Assignment comprises a trove of ingenious photographs, videos, and sound works—all shot while in flight, using only the materials close at hand, and documented with her cell phone. The video piece on display here is part of the exhibition Manna: Masterworks from the Tufts University Permanent Art Collection, on view until December 7. It showcases forty-seven of the finest pieces Tufts has acquired, among them works by Pablo Picasso, Albrecht Dürer, Walker Evans, and Louise Nevelson.