The centerpiece of Allan deSouza’s new video and photographic installation, Close Quarters and Far Pavilions, consists of a four-channel video work of digitally manipulated sequences shot from inside commercial flights at the time of take-off and landing. The title, culled in part from M.M. Kaye’s 1978 novel about conflicting identities and split loyalties set in India and Afghanistan, suggests the aircraft’s cramped spaces and the hand-to-hand combat of “close quarters,” as well as the exotic allure of faraway places.

Each flight in the video is en route to or from San Francisco, video taped at the exact moment when we hear “all electronic devices need to be powered down.” The resulting images enact a series of perpetual departures and arrivals. The source imagery is further edited to create dissonance and architectural space, as in the two large projected videos that digitally split into two mirror images. Photographs of the landscape below, taken in-flight, complement the videos. These “ordinary” views of land- and sky-scapes are rendered into mirror images suggesting human-made shrines, mythological figures, aliens, and other figments of the social imagination.

DeSouza’s deteriorating eyesight, for which he has undergone a series of corrective surgeries over the past ten years also plays a role in the visual strategies employed in this exhibition. This medical condition has made variable nature of vision uniquely central to the artist’s life and work. It has led him to conceptual approaches that he may not have otherwise known or considered. Following cataract surgery, he completed a body of work, Divine, in which he photographed previously unnoticed details inside airplanes—the photographs are continuing proof that he could still see, evidence for himself of what is out there, and evidence of what still remains so magical about vision.

The idea of endless travel is tied to both the way of life of the contemporary artist and also the diasporic condition, both factors important to deSouza’s personal identity. Often incorporating materials from his body and daily life as evidence, deSouza describes his work as having the potential to examine how bodies and social spaces are marked by history, geography, and culture. Close Quarters and Far Pavilions connects and reveals an invented and phantasmagoric unfolding of time, space, and longing. Connecting to YBCA’s Big Idea, Encounter: engaging the social context, deSouza’s cross-cultural lived experience in Africa, Europe, and the United States, facilitates his understanding of the complexities of contemporary global life. In this and other works he takes a unique view on deeply personal issues such as home, immigration, exile, and displacement.