The Zoom Portraits: Sharrona Pearl
2021, three 14" x 17" drawings on mylar, mounted on a 22" x 60" illustration board
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Three separate portraits, done through a series of Zoom meetings. The Mylar drawings are mounted on a long scene of COVID patients surrounded by medical staff. All through that background, black silhouettes of people—and cats—weave in and out.
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The 1st drawing shows Sharrona in her bedroom, wearing PJs. In the 2nd, she seated by a window that shows a night scene. Her reflection wears a mask. The 3rd image is my self-portrait. Sharrona took screenshots while we talked (I did not know when she would do this, only that she did). Towards the end of our collaboration, she picked the one she liked best (whether I did or not) and I drew it to her specifications.
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All 3 drawings are bordered by texts from a transcribed conversation between us on the subject of our collaboration.
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Sharrona Pearl is Associate Professor of Medical Ethics at Drexel University. A historian and theorist of the face and body, Pearl's work centers on the health humanities and incorporates critical race, gender, and disability studies. A historian and theorist of the face and body, Pearl's publications include Do I Know You? From Face Blindness to Super Recognition (Johns Hopkins, 2023); Face/On: Face Transplants and the Ethics of the Other (Chicago UP: 2017); About Faces: Physiognomy in Nineteenth-Century Britain (Harvard UP: 2010). A well-known freelance writer, Pearl has bylines in The Washington Post, Real Life Magazine, Tablet, Aeon, and numerous other places.