Let’s Do the Time Warp Again

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Harley Morman, “Never Change (Grade 7),” 2021

lenticular light box, 22″ x 18″ (courtesy the Art Gallery of Alberta; photo by Charles Cousins)

As I walk across the exhibition space at Harley Morman’s show, Let’s Do the Time Warp Again – at the Art Gallery of Alberta in Edmonton until Jan. 30 – the light boxes in front of me morph from one face into another. An image of a girl on the left shifts, merging with a man to the right. A step backwards and the faces change again.

The effect isn’t a trick of the light or digital animation – it’s a lenticular print, where two photos are digitally divided into strips, then interlaced into one image and printed on a ridged surface. Viewed from one angle, the prints show one image, but as you walk across the room, they slowly shift, merging together and then resolving into another image entirely.

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Harley Morman, “Never Change (Grade 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11),” 2021, lenticular light boxes, 22″ x 18″ each (courtesy the Art Gallery of Alberta; photo by Charles Cousins)

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Harley Morman, "Let’s Do the Time Warp Again,” 2021, installation view at the Art Gallery of Alberta, Edmonton (courtesy AGA; photo by Charles Cousins)

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Morman, a PhD student in cultural, social and political thought at the University of Lethbridge, is a trans artist whose work plays with and deconstructs the gender binary. In his series of lit-up lenticular prints, Never Change, he combines images of himself presenting as a young girl, from Grade 5 to Grade 12, with recent photos.

The two pictures in each lightbox never fully mesh into one complete, resolved image. They are spliced together, separated with stripes of acid yellow, cadmium red or pale blue. In the exhibition booklet, Morman explains that within his lenticular prints, “multiple, sometimes conflicting views are held in tandem.”

Some of the prints in the series, like Never Change (Grade 9), line up the two images so the faces overlap, eyes linked. But in Never Change (Grade 11), Morman and his past-self stand shoulder to shoulder. Grade 11 Morman’s T-shirt proclaims, “this is what a feminist looks like,” while present day Morman’s T-shirt reads, “let’s objectify each other and get off.” There’s a sense of continuity and support between his old self and his present.

The exhibition space is filled with hanging mirrors, colourful wall decals that would look at home on a school locker, and clocks – marching forward, ticking backwards and stopped.

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Harley Morman, “Scorekeeper,” 2021

installation in “Let’s Do the Time Warp Again,” at the Art Gallery of Alberta, Edmonton (courtesy AGA; photo by Charles Cousins)

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Harley Morman, "Let’s Do the Time Warp Again,” 2021, installation view at the Art Gallery of Alberta, Edmonton (courtesy AGA; photo by Charles Cousins)

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At the back of the exhibition, is Scorekeeper, a bedazzled scoreboard with a rainbow of beads and plastic hair curlers that plays with ideas of time and reflection. The words “home” and “away” are spelled backwards, and a clock hanging on the board is flipped. It can only be read in mirrors dangling from the ceiling. The score flicks back and forth between 01 and 10 on the board, with the reverse reflected in the mirror. The numbers are a visual pun – binary code is made up of 0s and 1s, and as with lenticular prints, mirror images allow two seemingly opposite things to coexist.

At the heart of the show is the phrase “never change” – often written in the back of school yearbooks. Morman plays with these words in his work, pointing out the absurdity of the dictum. Change is inevitable, and we all hold different pieces of ourselves – and our histories – at once. ■  

Harley Morman: Let’s Do the Time Warp Again at the Art Gallery of Alberta from Oct. 9, 2021 to Jan. 30, 2020.

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