Focusing on subjects like ritualistic dancing, handwritten letters, and watery landscapes stippled with boats, Wallace often recontextualizes vintage photographs to elaborate on how historicized materials can still speak to the present moment. Allowing her works, as well as her person, to engage what can happen only spontaneously, the invigorating sense of newness with which her work is possessed often translates into a vital reading of a culture’s legacy.

In Evening Vista Wallace turns her eye to the modern city with the same immersive attentiveness she devotes to the traditions of non-Western cultures. Capturing a moment where architecture becomes a ritualistic environment, what stands out is the hyperreal brightness of the sun, which appears otherworldly in relation to the ordinariness of car traffic and the urban designs below it. What’s typical of this work is the manner in which Wallace has captured a world on the wing, as opposed to letting the isolating constraints of an exclusively studio-based practice dictate her artistic perceptions and insights. In this way, she instills present-day moments with the contemplative distance normally reserved for vintage photographs.