Ouroboros Series Statement
2014
Ouroboros, the snake eating its tail, represents cyclicality, Infinity. Pelvic bones symbolize this concept: although they are bones, representing death, they protect the womb and are the house of creation. These represent both the life held in death as well as the death inside Life, a beautiful spiral of Infinity. The infinity sign is visible in the holes of the pelvic bone. The stone age fertility sculpture elucidates this concept by nestling within the cavity of the bone, referencing both the infinity of birth-death and re-birth and the seed of life held within death.
I use sex store vaginas as media, to free them from their intended purpose as sex toys and to give them their own voice in an art context as well as to create a dialogue around the notions of reductivity, feminism, sexuality and power.
Drowning in the Ghosts of the Night Sea (video) discussion
The video is meant to evoke trance in its slow ,repetitive and hypnotic visuals and sound. Perhaps the viewer, in a quiet, private moment, can use this video in order to induce their own trance and such be transported to the psychic space needed for communion with the spirits.
Submerge yourself in the mystery of the universe, do not fight, you must drift, weightless, will-less. Ghosts surround you telling you their secrets… will you hear them? Here, in the dark terror and beauty of the Night Sea, finally you are able to see the spirits that always surround us. They clamor about you, pulling you deeper under the surface of the consciousness of modern society, taking you deeper into the original consciousness of the primitive soul. Time slows, images blur and streak across your vision, light is all that is left.
Silence occurs suddenly. Anxiety greets this sudden absence of Ghostly Counsel….have the Ghosts finished talking to me? Will they speak again? Have I missed my opportunity to channel the knowledge of the spirits? Here we confront the soulless emptiness of the world without spirit. Please, have no fear, trust in Spirit. Their Time is different than human time. Allow the process to carry you like a current. You are swept along under the surface now, drifting like plankton in the oceans. The sound returns, is it a frozen moment, slowed in panic or is it that this sound is stretched across infinite space.
At the same time that this is a long video, it is also a single moment, a moment of great shamanic connection. Time has frozen in the shock of the connection with spirits, after such a long time away.
Simplicity in concept is used as a metaphor reminding us to pare away the layers of civilization to allow us to regain the connection to the Universe and to the Spirit World. Color is eschewed as a distraction, as is any concrete imagery or iconography.
Ouroboros Series Statement
Ouroboros, the snake eating its tail, represents cyclicality, Infinity. Pelvic bones are used, symbolizing this concept in that although they are bones, representing death, they protect the womb and are the house of creation. These represent both the life held in death as well as the death inside Life, a beautiful spiral of Infinity. The Vagina, obviously, is the gateway to procreation as well as the passageway for new life. The Venus symbolizes fertility, the Nest, safety and a place for both the generative act to occur as well as the place where life bursts forth and is nurtured. The prescription bottle is of Clomid, a common fertility drug. This panel holds a broken pelvic bone that has been wired together, symbolizing both the essentially mechanical nature of life, and the artificial means that can be used to induce naturality. Additionally, the wires are twisted to recall the shape of DNA and are behind the bones, hidden, like the mechanics so essential to life.
There is no Monster. exhibition at New Material Art Fair
The dioramas represent my response to the attitude of shame, marginalization and threat assigned to women, our sexuality, and body parts throughout history. We are viewed as the alien Other, our sexuality feared as dangerous, treacherous or shameful; Monstrous. There is no Monster is my theme.
The Installation further elucidates the meanings of the work in its discussion on artificiality vs. biology. The installation is composed of fake vines and real plants, the real is hidden among the fake. The vaginas in the dioramas are fake, sex toys reclaimed as a statement about feminism, women’s sexuality and power. Because the fake and real are so mixed it becomes impossible to discern the real from the fake. The reality of our biology is so upsetting that it has become necessary to replace naturality with artifice. Further, the idea of the artificiality of gender constructs is contrasted to the reality of our human biology.
The installation, though it looks lush and green, is just 2 stepladders with 2 boards and some fake vines and plants. This is a discussion about the rickety nature of illusion and the surprising fragility of oppressive states.
The Hedge, Allison Kotzig (USA/SK)
The Hedge, Allison Kotzig (USA/SK)
What secrets are hidden on the other side of The Hedge? Take a peek through the windows to find out… The Hedge is a statement about a culture of inequality and it represents the exclusionary world often hidden behind high, dense green hedges. My hedge, though tall and imposing, has windows cut into it; here the two worlds may pass through and experience each other. People on both sides of these hedges suffer as a result of this isolating method of living. he beautiful green of the living hedge renders it invisible as a method of enforcing a social system of privilege and want. Let us join together and live a life of peace and love!
Nest Box Site-Specific Installation for Irreversible Magazine
Art Wynwood 2013
The parameters of the installation were to use a cardboard box. This led me to examine the nature of materials; cardboard is a base material, common and mundane. But it is elevated to the realm of ideas and art through rreversible magazine’s project; to a place where the creative act occurs. Nests, to me, are conceptually similar; made of mundane and common materials, twigs, dead leaves, cast off plastic bits, these materials are elevated to he status of Home and to a place where the generative act and creation can occur. At the same time, the idea of a box is limiting, restricting. However, in this instance the box is not only limiting, but supportive as it itself is the atrix holding creation, much like the nest. In this installation, I have woven 4 smaller boxes together, highlighting the philosophy of colloboration by strengthening the box through support of the many. The box is itself and is ull of natural materials with the one exception of the sex store vagina. This introduces dissonance into the creation. Vaginas are, of course, the ultimate conceptual pinnacle of the ideas contained in this installation, being both he passage through which creation is delivered and a metaphor for the creative act, the home, the biological imperative . The artificiality of the material highlights the cultural role pushed onto the vagina: it is no longer a beautiful natural process but a stigmatized taboo. The artificiality of this cultural construct is highlighted by the very obvious fakeness of the material in contrast to the harmonious naturality of its surroundings. The original est, found on the ground in Ocala Florida in 2012 has fallen apart and has returned to its original state as nothing more than a collection of detritus materials. However, the underlying support materials have preserved it and ave served as a matrix holding its nest shape. This, once again, highlights the strenghening nature of collaboration. The entire piece, then, is a beautiful winding conceptual echo of itself.
Florida Serial Killer Discussion
The Florida Serial Killer series deals with many ideas, some of them competing. The first has to be prurience. Its prevalence in American society dominated by Puritanistic attitudes toward sex and especially towards the idea of a woman’s sexuality. Because this sexuality is not fully accepted, it becomes a topic which must be approached surreptitiously. Violence is one way to witness female sexuality without acknowledging desire. This makes the news coverage of sexual violence against women take on its dominant tone of prurience.
Another topic is the idea of Trophies. The artist has reduced the wide-ranging idea of Trophies to that of Vaginas as Trophies. Women are reduced to their genitalia in this artwork, reflecting the reductive nature of American mainstream culture. The series was almost called ‘Mounted’ as a way to reflect these ideas but the artist discarded it as too obvious.
This series is also a reflection of the fascination with sexual violence and serial killers. The hidden logistics of the crime become totems; body dump sites, method of finding and stalking victims, photographs of the cars used to transport the bodies, how to keep the victims from being heard or seen before, during and after the crime.
The frames are bourgeois, too pat, almost kitsch which reflects the essentially pedestrian, unimaginative nature of the serial killer with his tedious hatred of women.
The nail, obviously, acknowledges the violence done and is, of course, also a pun, highlighting the undercurrent of violence running below discussion of sexual conquests.
Cheap wood paneling was specifically used in order to bring to mind creepy 70s/80s basements where the rapes and murders of these faceless women could take place. The faces of the women are burned out with cigarettes, also reflecting the prevalence of smoking during the 70s/80s culture, as well as highlighting the depersonalization of the women victims. The burning of the faces also reflects the burning hatred of women displayed by the serial killer, who often seeks to obliterate the identities of his victims in shame.
Polaroids were specifically used as many killers like to keep mementos of their crimes but need to avoid detection. The use of polaroids shares this with child porn and many other illegal sexual activities where repeated reliving of the crime is essential to the perpetrator and his audience. With polaroids, there is no danger of being discovered by a nosy photo lab technician. Additionally, it is in keeping with the 70s/80s aesthetic brought about by the use of the wood paneling.
All of this above, however, almost takes a back seat to the reality that violence has a sexualized component that cannot be denied, no matter how unpleasant is the realization.
NOTE:
The faces are also burned out reflecting the fact that this could be a family member long hated by the killer. He is unable to kill the real object of his hatred and so turns to killing those that resemble the original object of hatred.
