Portraits as Portals: Psychic Mediums Read Unattributed Portraits

A Project by Jennifer Fisher and Jim Drobnick (DisplayCult) 

What can be known about artists whose names have been lost to history? The DisplayCult collaborative invited professional psychic mediums to perform readings of portraits by unknown artists in the AGH collection.  

The mediums were not given information about the artworks in advance. During their sessions, the mediums were asked to look out through the eyes of the portrait’s sitter to receive impressions about the artist. The painting thereby becomes a portal through which the artist’s life, manner of working, personal relationships and social scene are brought to light.  

Much in the same way that psychic mediums work with police departments to locate missing people, this project tests the use of paranormal perception as a method of art-historical investigation. The readings convey resonant details about the artist’s emotional state, motivation and the mood of their era.  

This intervention includes three unsigned portraits in the permanent collection galleries, each paired with a cycle of video-recorded psychic readings that reconstitute aspects about the once-known artist’s life. While some readings offer potentially verifiable facts, they often operate on an energetic level to transmit insights and feelings about the atmosphere and inspiration governing the portrait’s creation.  

This project has been supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.