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My goal when I make art is to utilize and
integrate my entire brain, body and spirit. Making art is about emancipation:
individual and collective. This entails excavating desires and gaining emotional
understanding while simultaneously analyzing societal structures, human
development and future possibilities.
I do installations because they encourage the audience to be present in
the immediate time and space and to be aware of their bodies within the
environment. This feels crucial to
me because we live in a time when 2-dimensional electronic media dominate more
of people's time, often alienating people from their bodily experience. In
addition, because installations usually aren't for sale, they don't trigger
people's desires to own objects as much as other artworks.
This subversion of the desire to possess objects helps lead the audience
to a more reflective experience and encourages public discourse.
I see our society drowning in objects and possessions.
For this reason it is difficult for me justify creating more objects,
even though I love doing so. I want
my installations to function as visual poems —where the objects and
relationships between or juxtaposition of objects trigger thoughts, feelings and
concepts. My strategy in working
with found and existing objects is to recycle the debris of society and assist
people (and myself) to understand human development — past, present and
future. Through working with
familiar objects which are loaded with a variety of meanings and connotations, I
intend for the work to be accessible to a wide audience.
A central technique within my installations is suspension. My interest in
suspension is related to issues of power and control.
What are we connected to? Who
holds the strings? There is a way
that dangling objects in space activates the environment in a unique way and can
trigger people's sense of wonder and mystery while interrupting their usual
constructs, freeing them to think in new directions.
Web (Installation with 13 Names) is a complex
labyrinth which functions as a metaphor for weaving a life and navigating
a path and direction. I struggle with balancing many desires and interests (an
epidemic aliment due to our society's exponential increase of information and
stimulation). Through creating this weblike labyrinth I
explored my feelings of fragmentation and my desire for a more panoramic
view — a difficult perspective to
achieve amidst today's demands for specialization.
I gave the installation 13 titles.
The most accurate of them was Pursuit of Joy in the Midst of Pragmatism and
Escapism. Much of my work is
created out of fear: fear of the destruction caused by a racist system, fear of
an increasingly greedy and consumption-obsessed society, fear of concentration
of power, etc. In this piece I
decided to interrupt my furrowed brow and attempt to pursue joy. Even though I am dedicated to integrating all forms of work
and play and have been for many years, the "work" aspects of my
endeavors usually receive more attention than the "joyous" aspects.
However, I do feel confident that pursuit of joy is an essential direction in
the path of collective and individual emancipation. In my installations I survey large topics and synthesize many ideas. In the exhibition TIME 2000: The Millennium Show I explored concepts of time, such as circular, linear, historical time and differing calendar systems. In other times and cultures time has been viewed as circular, connected to daily and yearly rhythms. In classical Greek times many people believed history would repeat itself endlessly. In medieval Europe the world was expected to end at any moment (when Christ was to return). The prominent Renaissance paradigm about time was that the world was decaying. The invention of the mechanical clock helped to disassociate time from natural rhythms. The mechanical clock turned time into an abstract entity which could be precisely and mathematically measured. This enabled the scientific revolution to begin, which was of course followed by the industrial revolution. The measurement and dissection of time has exponentially increased and dramatically affected our lives. We force our minds and bodies into constantly increasing speed. Time is essentially the amount of life that we have to live — it's unfortunate that people live with the adage that "Time is Money". THE
PRISON PROJECT will be an exhibition made up of sculptural installations
exploring various aspects of the prison system, particularly the belief systems
in our society that have created and continue to maintain it. With my
installations I endeavor to put our society's prominent ideologies into tangible
physical form to assist myself (and viewers) to understand humanity and
human evolution. My works function as visual poems in which objects and the
relationships between them trigger feelings and ideas. I work with found and
created objects, recycling the familiar and unfamiliar debris of human life,
molding them into something that allows a new look at society and a new
understanding of self. Since an installation is not something one purchases or
possesses, instead of stimulating a desire to consume, my works create a space
for conversation and the process of puzzling through feelings and questions. The
goals and objectives of the project are to foster understanding about the prison
system and compassion towards those incarcerated as well as those working within
the system. I want people to look at underlying causes of the prison system. I
hope that through understanding will come motivation to change the system from
one that punishes people to a system that focuses on prevention, healing,
education and rebuilding people’s lives. In this exhibit I plan to explore the ideas of society that
propagate punishment as the major solution to anti-social behavior. The old but
persistently influential concept of original sin, and the "scientific"
belief in genetic propensity towards violent behavior are examples of concepts
that fuel the current system. I
have already created three installations in this vein and am planning to create
three to five new pieces. The
existing pieces are as follows:
The
piece titled LITE AGENDAS, created in
1991, addresses themes of consumption and hierarchy .
The installation is a metaphorical look the structure of class and race
in our society. The bars represent
the prison system as well as other social constraints and divisions between
groups of people - such as the separation, which happens between economic
classes and "races" of people.
I utilize hypodermic syringes as a metaphor for consumption, and as a symbol for power.
White powders are used in my work as a representation of technological
refinement (i.e.., sugar, pharmaceuticals, cocaine, crack) and also as an aesthetic
creation of addictive desire.
In our society I see the marketing of
"LITE" as similar to furthering the desirability of liteness of skin.
In LITE AGENDAS the bowl of white
powder sits on top of the pitchforks. The pitchforks represent laborers and
working class people. A
"lite" substance is simultaneously injected from above through the
hypodermic needles representing a "legitimate" medical system. CRIME BILL/PRISON SYSTEM, created in 1995, is a "diagram" representing the mousetrap nature of drug laws and how they are tied to the history of agriculture and slavery. In the 1980 and 90's Crime Bills mandated harsher prison sentences for people caught with crack than people caught with cocaine. This policy skyrocketed the incarceration of people of color in the U.S. This piece looks like a trap. A bowl of white powder is suspended as a lure, under prison-like bars. The powder is held up with the weight of rib bones that indicates the high price of life damaged by this policy. The prison bars are held in place by the weight of the pitchforks. A bowl of yellow roses is placed in the middle of the piece as a prayer for healing the damage caused by racism. For more information about the disastrous effect of this countries drug policy on urban poor populations read Lockdown American by Christian Parenti. SUPERMAX CHRISTIANITY, created in 2000, looks at the complex history of Christianity. The institutions and teachings of Christianity have been a source of both oppression and liberation. A structure of gold bars imprison statues of Jesus with dreadlocks, hearts and crucifixes. Outside the "prison" structure, toy lambs and action figures cavort together. Jesus taught us to look at all people with compassion – including prisoners. I exhibited this piece at a Edgewood College, a Catholic institution in Madison, WI. I posted the following statement because I did not want the piece to be censored and I wanted to help people grapple with the complex content of the work. The religious studies department were enthusiastically involved in organizing group discussions triggered by the work. STATEMENT: "I
was hungry, thirsty, a stranger, sick, in jail, and you welcomed me. What you
have done for the least human being, you have done for me." Matthew 25:35-40
Jesus taught me to love and to have compassion for all life.
I grew up Catholic and even though I am not a member of a church, I still
consider myself a follower of Christ's teachings in my practice and actions.
This piece is my honest grappling with Christianity's complicated and
challenging history. Throughout my life I have striven to understand how
Christianity has had a liberating impact over the course of
history and how, simultaneously, killing, torture and slavery have been
justified in the name of Christ.
To look honestly at the history of our good and fragile race can be
heartbreaking and disgusting. Our ancestors' survival often depended on
aggression and strength, and because of this humans have acquired habits and
patterns of fear and aggression. I believe that it was Jesus' goal to interrupt
our habits of greed and violence by teaching us to love each other and view our
enemies as our friends.
Jesus taught us that each person has the divine within and we need to
think of each person as we would think of Christ himself. Each time a person is
executed, - that person is Jesus. If
Jesus were alive today, throwing the money changers out of the temple, would he
be in prison? The US, the richest
country in the world, has the largest prison system, which holds two million
people. We are now building supermax prisons for our children while Coke and
McDonald's makes profits feeding them garbage in their schools.
I am very proud of Catholicism's strong history of liberation theology.
I wanted this piece to demonstrate Christianity as a force of liberation.
I think the piece turned out to be somewhat frightening because of my own
feelings of desperation about the world. Violence
is rampant. Super hero action
figures ingrain children with the belief in violent solutions.
Lambs are sacrificed: poor people and "undesirable" people are
treated as if they are disposable. Have
we imprisoned the teachings of Jesus? Beth Racette A
significant part of THE PRISON PROJECT is building bridges with people
living and working in correctional facilities and with organizations working on
prison reform. I am in communication with people who work within the system and
corresponding with journalists and individuals who are incarcerated. During the
exhibit I will bring together an educational panel and public forums for people
to discuss questions raised within the work. The prison industrial complex is growing larger every minute. The U.S. has more people incarcerated per capita than any other nation in the world. We are bombarded with “crime” in every news program. Supermax prisons treat people in ways that would be considered unacceptable for animals. The public is becoming more aware of the pressing implications this has within our society. I believe that the prison system affects everyone within this society. The targeted audience for this project is the general public. My work is usually playful and intriguing and I hope the exhibit will have the power to spark the interest of people who have not recognized their personal connection to the prison system. For people who are intimately tied to the prison system the exhibit will bring hope to see that issues are being examined in a compassionate way.
It is my
aim that all people within society are potentially able to approach my work and
be stimulated to ponder a multitude of questions. I have most enjoyed exhibiting
in non-art contexts where my work reaches non-typical (but very responsive)
audiences in the course of their daily lives. The work does not require knowledge
of art history. It does, however, integrate many concepts from my studies of
anthropology, sociology, history and psychology. My work is intimately tied to our material
culture which makes the work accessible
to a wide audience because of the familiar and metaphorically charged objects
that I choose. People have
strong attachment to and experience with objects such as pacifiers, hypodermic
needles, cages and white powders. I ask viewers to draw upon their personal
experience and contemplate their relationship to larger social questions. The
installations are demanding intellectually and emotionally but at the same time
are very
playful, elegant, orderly and beautiful — these qualities help people think
creatively about very difficult questions. My work often has precariously
balanced or suspended elements, which add to the sense of urgency and
fascination and also imply an impending change ready to occur. |
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