Subjectivity has become a precarious condition formed from the tension between rationalized institutional systems of control and narrative image production. My work is primarily interested in the representational ramifications of datasets (visual and non-visual), paperwork, and photographic as well as non-photographic visualization and how each of these mediums shapes our individual experience of collective trauma.
Through sculpture, performance, and craft my work examines the way mediation affects our response to traumatic events. In my sculptural practice I perform, transfigure, and distort disembodied visual images and bureaucratic paper trails left by acute events such as the Rodney King beating and the obtuse continual dehumanization of wars abroad and within (or on) our own borders. In my process-oriented fiber works I make image construction transparent and the medium of transmission explicit. This translation of the image from near-instantaneous creation to the time-intensive medium of craft alters the physical and psychological space between viewer and the document. Infusing the hand-made onto the images generated by machine-vision serves to question the authority of the seductive Cartesian aesthetics of surveillance and remote sensing. This translation of images---from beams of light inscribed momentarily on the brain by LCD and plasma to tactile nuanced experience---disfigures the image materially and editorially. By changing the context and stripping the photograph (video still or computer generated image) of expository declarations I aim to reveal the latent political content of the image.
My sculptural practice strategically pushes imagery and data associated with collective trauma beyond the visual cortex and into the more belabored time and vibrations of the body. I want to provide an alternative means to negotiate and digest the messy complexities and subtle seductive power facilitated by systems of visual control that reverberate between the interpersonal and institutional.