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| The Wound and the Voice series 2008 |
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| The Wound and the Voice series 2008 |
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| The Wound and the Voice series 2008 |
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| The Wound and the Voice series 2008 |
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| The Wound and the Voice series 2008 |
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| Duty Calls, series 2008 |
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| Making the Body and the Archive: Our Painful Inheritance and How We Learned to Live With It installation view 2009 |
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| Mission Accomplished I, II, & III 2009 |
In the Bush administration’s war on terror, feminist concerns of sexual self-determination and labor equity were co-opted as tactics of military interrogations. Despite this performance of sexual power, women remained objects in a violent, neo-imperialist tableau. This vignette is a particularly American portrait of sexuality, racism and dominance, one not easily exorcised. This body of work investigates the ways in which heroic mythologies of the nation state inflect libidinal impulses. Using strategies of performance, camouflage, and craft, the work draws from the political social archive. It asks what is the visceral legacy of those libidinal impulses? And how do these desires animate the body?
I grew up in Washington, DC where monuments are a very mundane part of the cityscape. Horses are often in these early memorials to war, a romantic vision of industry and imperialism."Oh I Limp Concise Sadism!" (a reformation of “Mission Accomplished”) documents a return pilgrimage to my hometown. I don a white horse’s head made of chicken wire and paper, and drag the severed rear of the horse. I spew yards of celebratory ribbons like blood and guts. Without a viewing hole on the mask to guide my steps, I use the length of my arms to assess my path, only to fumble and collide with the pillars of the monument. My blinded movements and lack of coordination suggest the futility of an idealized, mythic nationalism.
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