Thalassa Raasch, “In Over My Head”
Thalassa Raasch will present “In Over My Head” at the Spéos Gallery, 7 rue Jules Vallès, 75011 Paris, from January 7th to February 1st, 2019.
Opening of the exhibition: 15th January 2019, from 6pm to 9pm.
In 2012, Thalassa Raasch walked into a diner in the small town of Cherryfield, Maine, and met Everard Hall, one of the last gravediggers in the United States still digging and filling graves by hand. Everard was sitting at a central table and had several conversations going all at once with his fellow diners and the waitress. They met. She said “My name is Thalassa,” and he replied, “Can I call you Charlie?” They’ve been friends ever since.
“In Over My Head visualizes a borderland where the boundaries of life and death overlap. This exhibition reimagines the barrens of northern Maine into a River Styx. Everard serves as a guide across this terrain. He shows me how to live with a real knowledge of death alongside life, and I mark our trajectory through that borderland. The photographs, audio, and archival materials of In Over My Head are my reflections from visiting this place.”
Thalassa Raasch is a French-American artist working in photography, video, audio, and installation. Her practice explores perceptual boundaries, translation and loss. Her research has included blind photography, traditional gravedigging and closed-eye hallucinations. Her work has been exhibited nationally and published internationally. Raasch holds a BA in Visual and Environmental Studies from Harvard University (2010) and a Master’s in Photography from RISD (2016).
She currently teaches at the Rhode Island School of Design, leading the City of Light: Photography in Paris course in partnership with Spéos.