death in the woods (3 of 3) Print

My life changed forever on February 15, 2011. My father, a man with whom I had always had a very tempestuous relationship, committed suicide in the woods behind our house. My work has changed dramatically in the past year as I have begun to gravitate towards performance and video in my artistic practice, eschewing painting for a medium more immediate and temporal. When all logic seemed to have vanished from my life I began to investigate the crests and pitfalls that steered my perception of and engagement with the everyday. This included videotaping myself as I recounted the day of my father’s suicide and staging a public performance where I shaved my armpits and my legs. These works were birthed from an impulse to push something uncomfortable and private out into the public, and in both instances I was able to bring something heavy or unspoken out into the open. Sadie Benning, Louise Bourgeois, and Tracey Emin continue to inspire me with their ability to reveal incredibly intimate details about their lives while simultaneously exploring the representation of the sexualized female figure. I am interested in how I can consider my own naked body inherently obscene by virtue of seeing myself through the male gaze. I present my naked form continually in my video works in the interest of addressing the discomfort I feel with the sexuality that is inescapable in my own image. In I lay beside you and I felt alone, I cover my body in lipstick to make myself both object and artist, marked by an object of stereotypical womanhood. In the work, I read a text written by Marina Abramovic in a dual effort to align myself with the grandmother of performance art while also calling attention to Abramovic's continued refusal to call herself a feminist. My most recent body of work uses actions traditionally coded as “female,” like applying lipstick or shaving my legs, to explore very private experiences. The inspiration for these works range from the emotions I felt after my father’s suicide to the fears I have in entering into an intimate relationship. The Lip Sync Series in particular has provided a means to explore many of my most private thoughts. Numbered sequentially, each piece starts when I apply lipstick and use my mouth as a drawing tool with which to mark a surface. Although I am moving my mouth to lip sync a text, no sound emerges. The texts, surfaces, and modes of documentation vary according to the intent of the piece.