Picture documentary and artwork as a Venn diagram. Sometimes the line between the two categories is blurred. A fine example of this can be found in Janet Biggs’s three channel installation, Afar, currently on show at New York’s Cristin Tierney gallery, which offers viewers a brief visual sojourn to East Africa’s Great Rift Valley — “the most unlivable place on earth.”
That last descriptor was the title of a National Geographic story about the area that first caught Biggs’ attention. As an artist interested in the extremities of human civilization, Biggs was fascinated by the Afar region made up of a triangular territory belonging to Ethiopia, Djibouti, and Eritrea. This in turn prompted Biggs to travel to the area twice (in 2014 and 2016) in an attempt to capture the essence of this “most unlivable” place. As for the success of her effort, that’s largely dependant on the category one uses to define the work.
As a documentary, Afar leaves viewers wanting. Largely comprised of scenic shots of sparse desert landscapes, locals, and some ominous views of Ethiopia’s Erta Ale volcano, the videos offer a purposeful lack of discernible narrative. Instead of information, we are given something more emotive. This scattered style, Biggs herself explains, reflects the itinerant nomadic lifestyle and the bubbling magma, a sense of the political turmoil that shrouds the region.
