Twenty-One Silent Stages: A Ballad

photography, wood stage
2021

Originally commissioned and produced by Artpace San Antonio, Twenty-One Silent Stages: A Ballad responds to the life-changing events brought about by this generation’s pandemic in ways that envision silence, emptiness, and voids in cultural and social spaces. The artists photographed the empty and silent stages of San Antonio music venues, performance spaces, and theaters that went dark during 2020 and 2021. The venues include The Bang Bang Bar, Carver Community Cultural Center, Cowboys Dancehall, Esperanza Center for Peace and Justice, The Lonesome Rose, Mission Marquee Plaza, and Paper Tiger, among other local favorites, some of which may close permanently as a result of substantial financial losses.

The empty stages portrayed in the photo series do not merely query the effects of the pandemic on performance venues but also the entirety of their related institutions: the musicians, performers, stagehands, audio engineers, and office staff whose creative and financial livelihoods depend upon the activities and opportunities of performance.

Twenty-One Silent Stages: A Ballad marks the social, cultural, and economic impact of COVID-19 on both macro levels (cities) and micro levels (the artists’ practice). Viewers are invited to consider the very potential of empty stages, postponements, and cancelations, and the new possibilities as people gather and performers take the stage once again.



Carver Community Cultural Center
Hahnemühle Photo Rag Baryta
17”w x 30”h (43.18cm x 76.2cm)
2021



Mission Marquee Plaza
Hahnemühle Photo Rag Baryta
17”w x 30”h (43.18cm x 76.2cm)
2021



The Bang Bang Bar
Hahnemühle Photo Rag Baryta
17”w x 30”h (43.18cm x 76.2cm)
2021



Installation view, Artpace San Antonio
Photo Credit: Beth Devillier
2021