Master of Fine Arts Thesis Exhibtion @ the Urban Arts Space, Columbus Ohio

The Mirage and the Rainbow

This Embrace 

Digital Image, Cardboard, Concrete, Cinderblocks

2014 

http://vimeo.com/89367035  

            I grew up in a mobile home park. Mobile home neighborhoods build and decay simultaneously; one day there is a house and the next an empty lot with cinderblocks and debris. Digital images, cardboard, and concrete are materials that have become essential to my practice. These relate back to my makeshift home with its cheap construction and quick fixes. I see the cinderblock as a foundation, both literal in the way it holds up a home and as a metaphorical replacement for the legs that hold up our bodies.

            Cardboard is a cheap, accessible material that is durable yet short lived like a mobile home. The cardboard cutouts are my way of building a stage to display the relationship between my physical presence and the perversions of my psyche. I have digitally altered photos of my self in the nude, removing all traces of my sex. In this fragmented and sexless form, my figure assumes an androgynous appearance. The pose that I have selected for this work suggests traditional representations of the female body in visual culture and challenges their meaning. Each one of these figures becomes a new entity that I can then interact with to explore my body and what it means to be a woman.