NOstalgia
Solo show at Greenville Center for Contemporary Art
2018
Artist Statement
The tendency to glorify the past so often overlooks all the things we’d rather forget-sexism, discrimination, violence, the little daily humiliations. I could go on but you get the picture. So who gets to tell the story of the past? Do the pictures left over from the popular culture of the day tell the whole story or even part of it? It only takes a small change, one slight addition or tweak to an image to alter the conversation. To talk about how far we’ve come, how much farther we have to go.
What you see in this show is the investigation of my affection for images and objects that come from a past era. Some things have specific memories attached to them from my childhood. Others represent my romanticization of an era I did not live through. With most of these images and objects, I am amused by them while seeing them as a reflection of progress, decline, and a commentary on being female in a discriminatory society.
Chick, dog, fox. These are all names women have been called without apology. Can we really look at the past and think of it as a time that women and people of color want to return to? Remind me, what was so great about unequal pay and absence of opportunity? Do the fabulous clothes make up for everything “we girls” have to put up with?
The tendency to glorify the past so often overlooks all the things we’d rather forget-sexism, discrimination, violence, the little daily humiliations. I could go on but you get the picture. So who gets to tell the story of the past? Do the pictures left over from the popular culture of the day tell the whole story or even part of it? It only takes a small change, one slight addition or tweak to an image to alter the conversation. To talk about how far we’ve come, how much farther we have to go.
What you see in this show is the investigation of my affection for images and objects that come from a past era. Some things have specific memories attached to them from my childhood. Others represent my romanticization of an era I did not live through. With most of these images and objects, I am amused by them while seeing them as a reflection of progress, decline, and a commentary on being female in a discriminatory society.
Chick, dog, fox. These are all names women have been called without apology. Can we really look at the past and think of it as a time that women and people of color want to return to? Remind me, what was so great about unequal pay and absence of opportunity? Do the fabulous clothes make up for everything “we girls” have to put up with?
