* All images used with permission. Please do not distribute without first contacting the artist.
Wielded by our hands in daily tasks, utilitarian objects become extensions of our bodies, prosthetics in the service of our desires. Because they can’t act on their own, we fold, compress, hide and stack them. We economize, and then use them unconsciously. If objects are generally used as a way of extending my body into the world, how would they act without my constant imposition on them” Once separate from my body, how would they extend themselves” To begin this inquiry, I deactivate the use-value link that makes objects into tools for me. Once stripped of their “usefulness”, I ask, how do these objects or materials grow, now that they have lost their original function” I imagine that the resulting components have their own bodies and through accumulation are intent upon working together to grow an even larger body. As in nature, where specific mathematical principles provide structure while allowing countless variations, I create strict boundaries that insure a pattern, but within which the outcome is ultimately unknown. Through this process, I suspend my everyday experience with inanimate things in order to study the possibility of their animation.
About “System of Recovery” (top):
Made from first aid tape, drinking straws, crinoline, plastic tips, cardboard, wood, acrylic, acrylic polymer varnish, vinyl Resin, adhesive
About “Caution” (bottom):
Made from plastic tape, plastic and rubber tubing, cardboard, rubber, wood, paint, adhesive
