Race, Shadow, and Self-Perception in I Live With a Ghost

It could be nice, us up there April Werle, 2025, 36 × 24 in, Acrylic and stain on wood panel

PlatteForum Artist Residency
Recap + Exhibition Themes

We’re currently in that strange unproductive time between Thanksgiving and Christmas, and I’ve been meaning to share about my residency experience this fall at PlatteForum, as well as my current exhibition, I Live With a Ghost.

Several unexpected outcomes emerged from working in Denver with curators, a collaborative team, and ArtLab interns who also love horror, particularly race-coded horror and dark fantasy.

The theme of my residency was code-switching and multiculturalism. I taught an eight week program where we explored code-switching through mirror pieces. We began by first defining code-switching and examining the negative impacts that occur when it happens involuntarily or subconsciously. Over the course of the program, we developed works centered on internal self-perception and external misperception, where each appeared on either side of a mirror, and how these two inform one another in shaping identity.

As the program evolved, we started looking at code-switching as a communication tool, one that, when used consciously and intentionally, can facilitate cross-cultural communication. We discussed how practicing code-switching with awareness and self-permission can allow for autonomy over external perceptions, allowing us to communicate in ways that honor our own modes of expression while also respecting the different communication practices of others.

Simultaneously, I was developing similar concepts of internal vs external perceptions in my own work for I Live With a Ghost. For the show I constructed a haunted house environment using the gallery’s movable walls. The installation included a series of shadow murals which included a hand and its slightly wrong shadow, a door ajar, as well as murals that extended off the paintings themselves, such as a buffet table and skewed windows and stairs. Each painting was paired with a large format poem that helped set each scene, creating an experience like walking through a picture book in a dimly lit gallery, with spotlights isolating each work.

To deepen the atmosphere, I experimented with projected animation and created an installation of window light cast onto the gallery floor. Periodically, a bull shadowpuppet would emerge and grow larger, then quickly pulsate into the shadowpuppet of a stag before disappearing.

In this environment, the haunted house serves as an external manifestation of internal conflict around racial self-perception, where race also appears as an external character, appearing in many forms from shadowpuppet deities, to ghostly silhouettes, and glowing idols. 

In this exhibition I Live With a Ghost, code-switching and the tension between internal and external perception are present in many forms between ArtLab’s mirror pieces and into the haunted house installation.