In FAMILY GARBAGE, found objects ubiquitous to digital advertisements and drugstore shelves are ingested by three life-sized figures whose haptic, abject bodies display these seemingly innocuous items through the translucent screens of their bellies. This work exists both as a physical sculpture and within the digital space of their cyber home, garbage site . As with the physical sculpture, garbage site re-contextualizes everyday objects to render them in a way that asks, what other meanings could these mundane objects hold?
These commercial items relate importantly to gender norms. The dolls consume and are saddled with these signifiers of gender and, at the same time, are constructed by them. Through explorations of hybridity, the experience of melancholia, and the production of gendered subjectivity, my work engages themes of systemic oppression and the ambivalent, hapless formation of gendered identity.
By forming a world around these characters through the interactive medium of installation, I encourage viewers to enter the space of the dolls. In the sculptural installation, a fourth chair sidles up to the family gathering, offering the viewer a place at the table; and in garbage site, it is the viewer who initiates the changing visuals of the page. Combined, these sculptural and digital elements create a world viewers can enter and identify with, generating empathy for the plight of the dolls.
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