Carissa Rodriguez’s “The Maid” and “The Girls”

New York-based artist Carissa Rodriguez will present two of her films, “The Maid” (2018) and “The Girls” (1997/2018). These works are framed by a short story by writer Robert Walser, tracking a caregiver’s 20-year search for a charge who got lost under her watch. Rodriguez’s own “Maid” follows six embryo-like Newborn (1993) sculptures by Sherrie Levine — themselves casts of a modernist 1915 work by Constantin Brancusi.

“The Girls” returns to footage of Rodriguez’s Chinatown neighborhood in the 1990s, lingering on the image of young girls at play. Channeling Walser’s exquisite compression of twenty years into a single paragraph, Rodriguez’s films similarly suggest the asynchronous and capacious timescale of works of art. The screening will be followed by a discussion with the artist about time and the slippage between biological, social, and artistic forms of reproduction.

To receive Zoom link, please email blleavey@princeton.edu