Pulled Down Eyelids, Read With Intention

Growing up through dance, I learned the power a performative object has in driving the narrative of a silent scene. Wanting to mimic that kind of storytelling, I have set up a maze of props from the video “Like chattering teeth behind a double-sided mirror.” In the video, a series of magical realist gestures are performed for the onlooker strung together to form a soliloquy for this international moment of heightened disinformation and fascism. On the curtains/banners are symbols pulled from a weather app Beijing citizens use to check pollution levels daily and also an educational device that illustrates healthy lung functioning. In 2018, as I explored another city and reflected back on the politics of my home country, I experienced this polluted air building in my lungs as a simile for the slow build up of actions that allows governments to slip into authoritarianism. The careful maintenance of the rise/fall of pollution levels by the Chinese government mirrored what I notice in the distraction cycles of American media. These symbols weave together and allude to our human nature to adapt to caustic living situations in the spirit of survival; ultimately calling to our own destruction. 

Bridged by a credenza we move into a domestic space, yet we are still within view of an insistent looker; binoculars always present. We encounter portraits from the series, “I think I married the back of your head, but damn it treats me well.” Playing with who has historically done the looking and who is the looked at, I hinge this series on my husband, Jordan’s portrait. Casting him in romantic tropes like Ophelia, or a woman fresh out of the shower, I use humor to critique what’s at stake through blind acceptance of these repeated caricatures of love, gender and sexuality.

*All pieces in this show were made while participating in Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute Artist-In-Residence in Painting & Drawing Program