Photo: Kasia Houlihan

I’ve recently curated “Luminous Transportations,” a site-specific installation by artist Jo Yarrington that will be on view at Marquand Chapel at Yale Divinity School from April 5 through May 27.  The work consists of a ribbon of translucent photographs shot by Yarrington during her peregrinations around the globe over the past twenty years.
She describes taking them as a private ritual, an attempt to “capture and retain through photography, random but compelling experiences in which I explored the nature of spirituality.”

Fitted into the windowpanes, these fragmented glimpses are structured in subtle cadences that recall the changing seasons, musical rhythms, narrative stained glass, and the episodic pages of an illuminated manuscript. The band of images emphasizes the sanctuary’s interior spatiality and is placed low enough to permit intimate viewing.  Once altered, layered, and ignited by sunlight, however, these snippet views of familiar and unfamiliar places encourage the viewer to contemplate the world beyond the chapel’s walls. Their profusion conjures life’s beauty and ephemerality, and how we grasp, lose, and refashion ourselves and sense of place—individually, in community, and over time.