Areas of Tension
Baker-Miller pink, a color-based in manipulation and pseudo-science, was the only color I could use in this installation. Two navy soldiers conducted problematic scientific studies that concluded that Baker-Miller pink made people weaker. Corporations, football teams, and drunk tanks utilized this color to envoke people to be calmer. As time went on and the frequent use of Baker-Miller sometimes made men even more aggressive.
In Areas of Tension, this installation explores our relationship to pink and understanding of the body. The color pink maintains and evokes a sense of whimsy, girlhood, and inherent femininity within our culture. Pink is a political color in its gender application and cultural re-assignment in the 1950s. In this new fourth wave of feminism, pink has become a color of resistance and unbridled femininity as the younger generations attempt to shed the stigma of the color.
One encounters Areas of Tension as they go up the stairs, and it sits above your head as a monument. Central to the installation is a nylon sculpture nestled in pink canvas. The nylon, called Suture and Staple, is filled with pillow stuffing and hardened insulation foam. Floating in front of Suture and Staple, a wooden triangular frame ripped off a canvas carries a floating bullet casing. You see soft nylon sculptures stretched, pulled, and contorted into varying shapes as you move up the stairs. As you move up the landing, you note the bullet that points at the top of the stairs, central to the entire piece.
Areas of Tension shows the human body in a state reduced to its simplest forms, the stuffed nylon referencing a bulbous body, dismembered, and genderless. Each nylon sculpture is wrapped in canvas, painted pink.
I wanted to explore discomfort and form shown in pieces that reference the body, free from explicit imagery and traditional painting techniques within this piece.
Through my own personal experiences with painting, I realized I had a reliance on depicting bodies in a traditional sense to encapsulate what I really wanted to explore, the human experience. I realized there was a lot of ego involved in painting portraits and having recognizable imagery, and I have felt a limitation and an obligation to what painting could be.
So in tandem with dismembering the body into these soft forms, I decided to dismember the fundamental aspects of a painting- Wood, canvas, and paint. I've wanted to do this for a while, and because of my limitations of using only one color, it forced me to become more sculptural with my work. I was inspired by Howard Schwartzberg and Sam Gilliam's take on presenting and contextualizing a painting. It stroked this fantastic exploration of creating an artwork in its most essential parts, and this work is something I will continue.
Areas of Tension are reinforced by this entity being the first thing you encounter on the stairs.
Areas of Tension are reinforced by the pulled wire and floating sculpture.
Areas of Tension are reinforced by these nylon sculptures twisted and contoured into these shapes, pulled, taught, and hung.
I wanted to explore discomfort, dismemberment, and how this color has a nefarious and manipulative background, shrouded in this wash of pink.
