Kim Campisano   
Artist & Educator

Like many artists, while COVID-19 impacted every aspect of existence, including our sense of space, social practice, and even time, I documented my surroundings within a constricted range of neighborhood and adjacent streets, noticing how interior and exterior worlds became barricaded and impenetrable. 

The Decontamination Series emerges from noticing the rituals we go through to protect ourselves and others. In these images, masks hang from rear-view mirrors behind the windshields of cars, keeping them handy and even cleansed by UV sunlight. I am interested in how the interior (safe) realm also reflects and refracts the exterior (less safe?) world.

In the series, Things Left Behind, I bear witness to the passing presence/absence of others by acknowledging the beauty of what they let go of - not merely as trash or refuse, but as loss and remainders.

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All photographs taken between March 2020 and August 2021 in the Allendale Park and Laurel neighborhoods of
East Oakland and the campus of Washington High School in Fremont, CA.