Infantile Games , 2024
I am inspired by materials--items that seem to have lost their purpose and identity. In fact, I believe that materials have their own journeys, moving from one place to another. At each step, they lose something in their passage as they seem to be falling apart, then gaining as I sit at the back of a church or a synagogue, hand stitching many of the rips and “sores” in the material into a canvas for my work.
For me, this is especially true for jute sacks, and the memory of what was “inside” and “outside.” They speak to me, forcing me to question renewal, value, migration, globalization, and economic exchange. The sacks that I gather from farmers markets and take new life as part of my artwork conjure many memories and become the signifiers of exploitation and abuse as well as beauty and the creative force.
As I weave plaster, crushed pearls, resins and precious metals into them, the sacks are transformed with new life. Architecture, entropy and socio-dichotomies are “built” together as light, shadows and an infinity of scintillations emerge to unveil a new language and expression.
For me, this is especially true for jute sacks, and the memory of what was “inside” and “outside.” They speak to me, forcing me to question renewal, value, migration, globalization, and economic exchange. The sacks that I gather from farmers markets and take new life as part of my artwork conjure many memories and become the signifiers of exploitation and abuse as well as beauty and the creative force.
As I weave plaster, crushed pearls, resins and precious metals into them, the sacks are transformed with new life. Architecture, entropy and socio-dichotomies are “built” together as light, shadows and an infinity of scintillations emerge to unveil a new language and expression.