Fever Dream
by Charlie Mahoney-Volk
bachelor of fine arts, photography major
Fourth Year | Graduation year: 2024
Fever Dream shines a light on the anxieties of living through a crisis. Using staged cinematic photography, the image features odd props and setting to convey the eclectic anxieties of a dream-like state that reflects the traumas of real life.
In the photograph, the subject is framed through a vignette, forcing the viewer to see only what is uncovered through light. The subject is exposed, caught in this fleeting moment of confusion, a decisive moment that the lens makes possible. The camera captures the gaze of the subject right at that threshold moment where this dream-like scenario becomes disrupted by reality, allowing the unseen to be seen.
Fever Dream is inspired by my own fever-induced dreams while ill during a time of crisis within my own life. While the dreams were often ridiculous, disorienting, and humorous, they spoke to much larger issues of displacement and panic in my life. Fever Dream longs to understand the anxieties of the real world through the hazy and eclectic anxieties of the dream world.
About the Artist
Charlie Mahoney-Volk (they/them) is a queer, non-binary artist from Treaty 1 Territory, so-called “Winnipeg, Manitoba”, and is currently based on the unceded traditional territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil- Waututh Nations, so-called “Vancouver, British Columbia”.
They are currently completing their BFA at Emily Carr University of Art + Design, where their practice is centred in photography, printmaking and bookmaking. Their work explores historical ties to westernized masculine archetypes in relation to queer gender identity.
Charlie currently works at Emily Carr University of Art + Design as a Student Monitor in the Photography Department, as a Research Assistant in the Artists’ Books Collection, and as the Editor-in-Chief at WOO Publication.