Life Signs

a series of eight 29x42x4in pieces -acrylic, transfer, and block print on paper with various objects

Representing the commodification of women, stock graphics appropriated from contemporary advertisements and medical publications are printed in wallpaper pattern style and painted in popular home interior color schemes. These socially constructed signs become the wallpaper, the backdrop in front of which, we play our rehearsed dramas and rituals of self-regulation. Working to reduce living flesh to mere commodity, while simultaneously claiming to uncover the “authentic” self, the reduced images of ourselves become naturalized and fade into the background of our consciousness. Displayed off the gallery wall using curtain rod hooks, each piece has one design that has been cut out to display a contained “specimen” on the shelf behind. This concealed refuse reminds us of the arbitrary nature by which we apply meaning. A useful tension can be developed aesthetically when the desires of the flesh and the discarded remains of its maintenance are brought back and forced to coexist on a conscious level, with the tired patterns of our bodies as profit machines.