New Project: Exchange

I've been working on this collaborative performance-for-the-lens project since January.  It continues my exploration of lipstick as a transferable medium that can connote gender, sexuality, power, etc.  For this project, I was interested in how those concepts play out within the context of a romantic relationship.  My partner and I each took a turn as the wearer of the lipstick/ initiator of the action.  For each round, we would kiss until no more lipstick could be exchanged, stopping to capture an image of the progress in between re-applications.  We repeated this process until the surfaces of both of our faces were as covered in lipstick as they seemed like they were going to get. 

This relationship is still relatively new to me, and has brought up a lot of ideas for me concerning my own sexuality and gender expression (I am a queer-identified gender-nonconforming woman; Nick is a straight cis man).  Performing this piece collaboratively speaks directly to the process of mutual transformation I have experienced in this process of getting to know and falling in love with someone while navigating these complexities. 

Much of my work deals with thoughts surrounding identity--the idea of our surface/ performed identity in relation to our inner/ personal identity; how both are in perpetual flux, informing each other, shaped within the context of broader external forces and systems.  My drawing process lately has involved directly drawing the configurations of shapes and lines that I see in the surface grain of the paper I'm working on, then tearing and reconfiguring that surface.  In looking at past projects like Putting My Face On and Kissing the Boundary, I've realized that my gestures tend to take on this process of accumulated mark on the surface until the original surface is completely obliterated/ transformed into something unrecognizable.  I like the fact that this can either take on a sinister tone or a triumphant one.  Change is difficult, and it is hard to know in the moment whether the struggle is ultimately for the better or the worse.  It is hard to know if you are losing aspects of yourself or discovering potentials heretofore unknown.  I want to speak to both--to the hope and the fear, but mostly to the overarching ambiguous mess of transition--the mess of trying to figure yourself out while simultaneously communicating to and with someone else, of learning and transforming together.  My takeaway so far is that making oneself vulnerable to someone else is always terrifying, but it can be beautiful too, especially when the exchange is mutual.  Anyway, here are the resulting images (more curated view available on the website):

Set One, Me:

Set One, Nick:

Set Two, Nick:

Set Two, Me:

 Composite, Set One:

Composite, Set Two:

Composites Combined:

Flashback to November/11: Creep Along

Back in November of last year, I took over an additional studio and turned it into a site-specific installation.  I'd been making large(ish) paper cutout pieces that came off the wall and had layers, and I wanted to build something that would be like actually standing inside one of those/ that would allow me to be completely surrounded and consumed by that kind of space.  I started by painting the walls grey...

Then painted the shapes left over from the roller a lighter shade of grey...

And some in darker shades...

I spent about a month locked up in this room by myself.  I was listening to Timber Timbre's "Creep On Creepin On"on repeat, and I reread Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" during the course of its construction, the combination of which reinforced some of the creepier overtones to do with solitude, dread, obsession, madness, etc.  I sat with just the walls painted for a little while, not really knowing where to go from that point.  I tried making a web out of duct tape, just to bring the physicality of the space out from the walls, but it didn't really work--the duct tape didn't really transcend itself; it was too legible as duct tape.

So, I decided to build out of the walls with chicken wire and layer over that with a bunch of greyscale photo backdrop paper I had lying around from the paper pieces.  I incorporated the duct tape as an adhesive, and continued the shapes from the walls with enamel paint. 

 

 

 

I obscured the given light sources of the window and the overhead light so that light had to be filtered through the growths. 

 

It was nearing the end of the semester, and I was given a deadline for when I had to clear out of the space because new students would be arriving.  I spent a few nights in the space, working to finish it so that I could show it before I had to dismantle it.

It kind of became like a manifestation of the interior space of my mind while I was working on it.  The grey was oppressive and the formations were increasingly alien and almost hallucinatory.  It was like an interior landscape.

I took so many photos, at different times of day, with the lights on and off.  Here are some:

I also recorded video while I de-installed (which I showed during a crit along with the remains of one of the larger paper formations, and pastel prints I made off of the walls).  Here's some of that: