Liz Charky

Before My Saturn Return

Before My Saturn Return is a multi-channel video installation that gathers intimate viewings of a young woman’s life with self-directed footage from ages 17-27. Created by Liz Charky, with support from Cuts and Burns Residency Program at Outpost Artists Resources, the artist culls fragments of experience, sometimes with a judgment of the past, and other times more observationally, treating the material as a kind of found footage that she has forgotten. The content features family gatherings, adventures with lovers and friends, experimental self-portraits, recreational activities seen in parks or other public spaces, city and suburban streets, the countryside, the desert, shopping malls, swimming pools, parties, camping tents, etc. The material feels at times like looking out a window watching the world from afar, then other times like peering into a person’s mind, advancing on their perspective. When that perspective is opened up and shared, it creates a visual poem about a young woman making sense of the world, the self, relationships, death and healing, all before her Saturn Return—a cosmic rite of passage when one is expected to change, to become an adult with adult responsibilities, to die (think: 27 Club), or perhaps for nothing monumental to happen at all.