What was the Confessional?

The Confessional was a mobile gallery space built in the summer of 2018 by Angela Baldus, Walter Wilson, Henry Wilson, and Ahu Yolac. The space grew from an idea prompted by a class taught at the University of Illinois Champaign Urbana by Dr. Jennifer Bergmark called Exhibition Practices. While imagining a space that would activate conversation around accessibility, art, location, institutions, and mobility, a small and intimate room or booth came into consideration. Building from here the correlation between this space and that of a confessional booth brought both conceptual and formal opportunities for growth of the idea into an object. The space was funded by the Urbana Public Arts Program and debuted in October 2018. It has traveled into indoor and outdoor spaces where it has shown the artwork of international and local artists. The Confessional is made of coroplast, pine, steel, gaffer’s tape, acrylic paint, plexiglass, packaging handles and measures approximately 96” x 96” x 52”. The space was designed as a site of learning to be used for showing artworks and also giving opportunities for emerging artists and creative practitioners to curate temporary exhibits.

The Concept

The Confessional is a mobile gallery space built to exist within other spaces. Comprised of three white walls, a screen, and a closed curtain—the space invites artists, makers, thinkers, and collaborations to engage audience members, one at a time, with ideas related to conversation, confession, and criticality. The Confessional critically considers what happens when art coalesces a conversation cradled by the viewer, the art object (thing/performance/painting) and the artist. The Confessional enables collaboration between those who happen upon the space and those who have consciously invaded that space—the mobile gallery itself, the artist, and the person/s behind the project (researcher, artist, curator, educator). Each experience in The Confessional is unique to each individual and is shaped by these many determining factors. In addition to the factors mentioned (the spaces, places, people, and things), The Confessional imagines the “what if (?)” presence of something else, which can be described yet not defined. This something else is perhaps the agency of the art object or the pedagogical function of art—or maybe it is an individual confession of graces, grievances, or cradled guilt onto a conscious mind (the viewer), a conceived being (the artist), or thing (the art object). The something else is possibly tbd or arguably nonexistent without human agency. Differing approaches to engagement and theories about art and education lend themselves to different ways of being within spaces and places. The Confessional embraces ambiguity as part of its push towards discovering with in movements and moments. Mobile and multidisciplinary, The Confessional asks artists, thinkers, makers, and collectives to take this space within a space, believe in the experience between an individual and an object, an object and its power, and the possible or impossible discourses encouraged between these various moments of interplay. Shaped by each project The Confessional seeks to situate itself in spaces best fit for the needs of the audience. Intimacy between the public and private, the institution and the individual, the maker and the user, the confessor and the confessional constitute the reason for The Confessional to exist, travel, and continue.