Portfolio: Material Specificity and the Index of the Feminine

Abstract

My practice has often been understood to act, in part, through its materiality, which I refer to as a translation. In a work like Sarah, which placed four slabs of lipstick in reference to the hard, cold steel of Richard Serra's One Ton Prop (House of Cards), the materials signify and act in gendered ways. The positions of masculine or feminine are not fixed, and I build away from initial art-historical references and offer the potential for ever-changing canons and trajectories of art. Significantly, scholarship in transgender studies explores the biological and cultural along with the use/absence of make-up as a transmogrifier. The materials are not essentially feminine, but we experience them through a culture that desires bodies to be gendered and sexualized. Although these bodies are absent in much of my work, their sexualized presence is referenced through the cosmetics I employ.