Join audiences for a gallery talk from artist Beth Lilly on her collection “The Seventh Bardo.”

ARTIST STATEMENT: Interstates are not innately interesting. The word brings up images of endless concrete, featureless structures, and bland landscapes. But I find the interstate to be a fascinating liminal space, unique to contemporary America. The sealed environment of our cars, the high speed of travel, and the limited access of the interstate itself, all serve to separate us from our fellow travelers, the landscape we traverse, and the obligations of our busy lives. In this environment designed to be as undemanding as possible on a driver, there is minimal engagement with my attention and I can just be; with the thrill of speed and my forward momentum, with the illusion of freedom from responsibilities, or with an internal journey of contemplation and reflection.

Not unlike a film in the classic American road trip genre, I establish a sense of place with monumental landscapes, whose dream-like blur plays with the passage of time and views are familiar yet other-worldly, presenting the view outside the window as a no-man’s land. The landscapes were shot handheld as I drove (while keeping my eyes on the road!), but the portraits are taken by cameras mounted on tripods and using a remote cable. While these are photographs of actual people I encountered on the road, I’ve recontextualized them as the denizens of a transcendent limbo. The portraits intimately introduce us to the inhabitants, the denizens, of this cultural and geographic anomaly – individuals who, like me, appear lost in thoughts that ruminate over past events and project into the future.

I grew up in the Southeastern cities of Charlotte, North Carolina and Atlanta, Georgia during the 70’s, a time when the new interstate system was a major agent in the transformations going on in that region. As a young woman, the interstate symbolized freedom from rural isolation and offered a doorway to exciting new experiences. As an adult, I turned to the interstate in times of uncertainty, seeking the kind of introspection and clarity I could only find on a long drive through its empty landscapes.  ‘Bardo’ is a Tibetan term, meaning ‘an in-between space’, and usually refers to a kind of limbo between death and rebirth. I am proposing that driving on the interstate is a kind of bardo. It’s in between the place we’ve left and our next destination, with hours of encapsulated solitude in-between.

A meditation on the modern journey, The Seventh Bardo reflects how this twentieth century innovation turned the experience of a journey from an exploration out into the unknown, connecting wayfarers to new experiences, to one where a traveler disconnects, and the attention turns inward for a rare opportunity for undisturbed introspection.

Learn more about the collection at bethlilly.com/the-seventh-bardo.