In Ambiguity, natural light streams in in abundance, illuminating domestic interior spaces, populated by figures in solitude, drawing stark contrasts between isolatory and communal experiences. Every figure represented is feminine, ranging in age from early childhood to the precipice of middle age. Dividing each horizontal composition is a series of harsh vertical fractures, each forming slight shifts in perspective which result in a subtle imbalanced unease as the various exposures deftly weave in and out of each other. The result is a series of images that have formed a tapestry of feminine ambiguity through dress, undress, and lack of direct emotional connection between subject and lens, embracing traditional photographic aesthetics in one moment and becoming starkly aware of the subjective limits of perspective inherent to a medium so often taken for granted as a visual neutrality.
Hung slightly away from the bare white walls of a gallery, seeming almost to float autonomously, is “Sericultural Semiotics,” a series of cocoons is displayed above a stack of paper, each with text printed on one side. Each cocoon affixed to the wall corresponds to a single rhythmic syllable on the papers below, though the phonetic sound of a single syllable varies from page to page. The unassuming corpse of an insect that once was then revels in the simultaneous becoming and undoing of systems of meaning, becoming a quiet semiotic cataclysm as it occupies more than one space simultaneously in a morbid metaphor for contemporary queer physicality, forever suspended in a state of potentiality whilst occupying more than one psycho-social space in simultinaeity.
Suspended from the ceiling, again seeming to float with a degree of autonomy, is “Untitled (Shroud),” a sheet of paper made of undone silk cocoons bound together. Roughly analogous to the size and shape of a human, the entomologic textile undulates gently, catching the movement of ambient air, and further ripples upon the approach of a viewer, seeming to respond almost as though it were alive, which,as the small pieces of silkworm skin embedded in the fibers remind the viewer, it once was.
While the digital collage of analog photography, text based installation, and papermaking textiles practice may seem to have little to do with one another, these two bodies of work coalesce and synergize to discuss a focused range of concepts. Each deals with constructed systems of meaning, from broadly understood linguistic and photographic constructs,to the minutia of individualistic gender presentation, constantly acknowledging that,in the absence of a socially agreed upon meaning, each stimulus discussed has no meaning at all. Also consistently running through each visual train of thought is the acknowledgment of previous iterations of queer art: from the collage work of David Hockney and the portraiture of Catharine Opie to the minimal installations of Felix Gonzales-Torres, the work seeks to find thelatest iteration of the queer voice in art through reflection on what has come before.Far from being marred in the past, though, the work takes on a tone of contemporary melancholy, embracing theisolation inherent to the current queer experience as the many facets ofa demographic attempt to navigate tenuous sociopolitical changes in the keenly felt absence of the generation before.