Colony, 2010. Archival Pigment Prints

The series of prints, Colony, pairs altered portraits of 19th century Westerners with altered Orientalist postcards taken and traded by Westerners in the Colonial era. The themes of sensuality, concealment, and exposure, already implicit in Victorian and Orientalist imagery, are taken here to an absurd degree. The comparisons play with assumptions regarding the colonizer and subject. Here, the insects are the invaders, modestly cloaking the body of “Une Belle Morocain”, or burying a Victorian man in the chaotic swarm of his own beard.

The process involved in making these prints includes digital and manual means. The swarms are created by gluing flies directly onto a print of an antique photograph or postcard. The collage is then scanned, and reprinted. Many of the prints are composed of two prints with different surfaces to mimic Victorian cabinet cards or a page from an antique photo album.

Coiffed: A Typology of Entropic Variations, 2008
Archival Pigment Prints, Each 5" x 8"

In my series, Coiffed: A Typology of Entropic Variations, the swarming beards and hairstyles take our attempts to control our bodies to an absurd degree, with a playful exaggeration of the quotidian frustration of taming our hair. The identity of the sitter is eclipsed by his or her hair, which takes on a life of its own in the form of a swarm of insects. In contrast to the classic carnival act in which a tamed bee swarm envelops the face of a performer, here the swarms grow; run wild; start to conform; then run wild once more. Even as we attempt to impose our will on nature, these insects impose their anarchy on us.

Installation Views: (dis)-order, Delaware Center for Contemporary Arts, Wilmington, DE (Images 5-7) and Private Collection (Image 8).

Infestation, 2006
Sixteen Archival Pigment Prints, Each 17" x 17"

In this series based on a Victorian typology of facial hairstyles, hair is replaced by a swarm of flies that seem to subtly vibrate in an abject mass. The shapes, ranging from the familiar “Boxed Beard” to the absurd “Houlihee,” are playful illustrations of the sculpting of body hair, and the taming of unfettered growth. Juxtaposed against this careful manicuring, the potential for disorder and deterioration is suggested by the flies that hover around the periphery of the shapes.

Installation view: Painted Bride Art Center, Philadelphia, PA.

Entropy Filigree (I), 2006.
Site Specific Installation at the Katzen Center, American University

In Entropy Filigree, random wisps of hair, withered stems, and bug parts are transformed from floor sweepings into an intricate and seductive wallpaper pattern. The piece reflects my interest in exploring dichotomies surrounding aesthetics and the body by drawing them closer together, finding sensuality in abjection, decoration in waste, and design in entropy.

In this site-specific installation at the American University Museum, a previously unconsidered, utilitarian space is transformed by highly decorative wallpaper, and by signs that highlight the sensuality of the body in a very public manner. A viewer looking for the toilet will be informed, not by the usual oblique word stating “men,” “women,” or even “restroom,” but with silhouettes of naked figures, acting out what might take place behind the doors. Private gestures such as a woman squatting as if to urinate are unabashedly exposed. Public gestures such as a woman sweeping or talking on the phone are rendered absurd.

The juxtaposition between the function and alteration of the space blurs distinctions between public and private spaces, between hallowed art galleries and utilitarian corridors. This new place that people pass through, conducting the quotidian business of relieving themselves in the bathroom, washing hands, drinking from the water fountain, or rinsing out a mop, situates the sensual body in an unexpectedly personal and public context.

Faced with the image of a urinating figure before entering a bathroom, the viewer is forced to identify with this exposed sensuality, and a private experience is made public. The silhouettes depict commonplace actions and are decidedly unrevealing. Yet, they seem surprisingly frank, even within a museum where images of nude women, in particular, are commonplace. The suggestion of the exposed body in both men and women becomes ridiculous and almost embarrassing in this context.

This exploration of our discomfort with our bodies fits into the larger scope of my work, which explores our urge to contain or control our sensuality, as well as the natural processes, growths, protrusions, and eventual degradation that our bodies endure.

My focus on this repressive relationship to our bodies is rooted in my interest in Victorianism, and the reverberations of Victorian values on Contemporary American culture. Highlighting that influence, I situate this installation, as I do in much of my other work, in the context of both the 19th and 21st centuries. While the silhouettes reference the 19th century, the figures in this installation are unambiguously contemporary, from the hairstyles, to the woman on a cell phone with wires trailing beneath her. The Baroque inspired design, and the lacy hair that is the focal point of the wallpaper, also reference Victoriana. The juxtaposition between the Victorian use of hair to create decorative and symbolic mementos, and the contemporary repulsion with the same idea, points to the contradictions in how our relationship to our bodies have evolved since the 19th century.   

Installation views:  with Duane Hanson sculpture in foreground (Image 1), with signs for stairs and utility closet (Image 2), with signs for women's and men's restroom in (Image 3), detail (Image 4).

Bodyscapes I-V, 2004
Pencil on paper. 15" x 90". Each square 3"

A sense of burgeoning or contained sensuality is often present in this body of work. The drawings explore the sensual and alien qualities of bodily functions and anatomy, and the endless cycles of containment and release that our bodies experience. The forms reference human and animal bodies, as well as the endless expanse of a landscape. In the series of installation-based drawings entitled Bodyscapes I-VI, I segment and compartmentalize the bodily forms into individual squares, drawing the viewer to closer inspection of the minutia that erupt from the surfaces.

Installation view: Nature:Redrawn at Redux Contemporary Art Center, Charleston, SC (final image) with Organic Matter in foreground.

Organic Matter, 2002-2004.
Coffee, thread, paper. Each circle 3”

Transplant (Step 1) and (Step 2), 2003
Iris prints, 22" x 30"

The diptych Transplant (Steps 1 & 2) imagines two stages in the process of hybridization between electrodes and nipples. The images are reminiscent of 19th century medical or anthropological diagrams, yet seem more influenced by fictional science narratives such as the story of Frankenstein. The images are disturbing, absurd, and playful, evoking an unease in the viewer as she looks at the strange or abject forms, and becomes aware of her experience in his or her own body.

Grandma, 2003

Part of Hands On, a public art initiative on Public Transit buses and exhibition at the Contemporary Museum, Baltimore MD