ARTIST, USA/SWITZERLAND
installations
Site-specific and multi-faceted, these installations address ideas of home and loss of home, permanence and transience and often invite participation from the viewer.
Creating home
Creating Home (Steps 1-2-3)
2018, Schusev State Museum of Architecture, Moscow
The Schusev State Museum of Architecture, located in the heart of Moscow (www.muar.ru),
is hosting CREATING HOME (Steps 1-2-3), a solo installation across three large rooms in this villa museum from 7 June to 8 July 2018, concurrently with the World Cup. Inspired both by the architectural drawings displayed at the museum and by her 2015 interactive project with newcomers to Switzerland called WHAT WE DIDN'T LEAVE BEHIND, viewers follow a metaphorical journey creating a new home in a new place. There are three steps to this journey to a new home accompanying 62 small, amorphous figures as they push through a sea of hope-filled balloons, ride a magic carpet of the homes of their dreams, and find themselves in an unfinished city of homes built precariously on the memories and artefacts they brought with them. Materials used: terracotta, latex, ribbon, text, blueprints, cyanotype, cork, paper, felt and original sound.
22homes
22 Homes (for birds and bees dreaming)
2017, site-specific, Installed at Camp Basel in Holzpark June 2017 and since July 2017, in the woods at Tosca’s Farm in Aesch, Switzerland.
What makes a house a home? Themes of migration, loss, permanence and transience run through her recent installations. Each bright yellow “birdhouse“ has small, handwritten blue quotes from A Convergence of Birds (fiction based on Joseph Cornell’s artworks) and text from her own dreams of houses and birds recorded in journals. Absurdly and precariously placed atop tall poles along the Rhine River in a fabulously, sunny week of Art Basel 2017. Now left to weather the elements and invite beastly inhabitation and decay while installed for a year in the forest of Tosca’s farm in the countryside outside of Basel.
Pack me up
Pack Me Up & Take Me with You
2019, Art Market Budapest
Clay figures in silk-lined wooden boxes
Of water & bodies
Of Water & Bodies Easing In
2015 Katapult Galerie / 2017, Holzpark, Basel
We Have Hearts, 2015/2016, dress dummy with sound, chain
Of Water & Bodies Easing In, 2015/2017, bath tub, lettering,
stones, heating blanket, pillow with interior sound
Pure/Impure, 2015 (edition of 8), carved soap, wood block, 14 x 14 x 8 cm
When Waters Break, 2015, bird cage, ice eggs in metal nest, 80 x 80 x 40 cm
Viewers are invited to lie down in a bathtub full of large, smooth rocks and rest their heads on a pillow which emanates the sound of overlapping voices coaxing them to come into the water. Most viewers describe it as a surprisingly comfortable and relaxing experience that can transport them back in time or to a deeply familiar and all-encompassing place. Here shown as part of Art Basel satellite fair Camp Basel, in residence at Holzpark Klybeck along the Rhein River. Previously exhibited as part of a site-specific, collaborative video installation project with Alvin McIntyre in the vast, stone cellar of Katapult Gallery, Basel, 2015, which also included WE HAVE HEARTS - dress dummy with heart sounds, OF WATER & BODIES EASING IN (bath tub, stones, pillow with original sound), PURE/IMPURE (carved soap, wood), WHEN WATERS BREAK (bird cage, ice eggs in metal nest, mirror, light) with sound by Joseph Clayton Mills and collaborators (www.josephcmills.com) Coming down the steep stairway, viewers were asked to hug the dress dummy to hear the heartbeats emanating from its chest and were invited to get into the bath tub, rest their heads on the pillow, listen to the original sound piece coming from the pillow inviting them to “come in, climb in, wade in” and watch the overhead projected video of water being poured on hands and face in a type of baptism ritual. Hanging under the stairs in the corner was a large metal bird cage with a wire nest of eggs made of ice. The eggs melted and ‘escaped’ the cage.
Didn't leave behind
What We Didn't Leave Behind
2015, Haupt Ort für Gestaltung, Basel
62 objects, felt, paper tags, 6 m x 6 m, variable
This installation at Haupt Ort für Gestaltung in December 2015 is a borrowed collection of 62 objects which were brought with people now living in Switzerland. For each object borrowed, a ‘shadow’ of the object was cut and a label was created telling a bit about the history of the object and the owner. After the exhibition, all objects were returned to their owners. Even when a new country or city promises brighter prospects, so much is left behind when people leave their own countries – family, language, familiarity, a sense of belonging. But what wasn’t left behind? What are those bits that have travelled with us from place to place? Why has that guitar pick bought in London come to have a permanent place in a wallet? Why can’t we part with that model car? Or that mobile phone wrapped in a plastic bag – the only object they have managed to bring with them making a dangerous crossing on an unsafe boat. It’s a connection to home, a possibility to hear a familiar voice, a sweet message, in a known tongue.
How to Get Back Up
How to Get Back Up
2005, Fraction Workspace, Chicago
2020, How to Get Back Up (Dreaming of Home), 2020, Basel Art Center, Basel
A glass staircase spirals up and out of view getting smaller as it goes up. Twine figures populate the floor like a trapped herd looking for a way out. Shredded dreams emerge at the edges like packing material. Always precarious, stairs can be a metaphor for progress towards a goal, for feeling ‘up’ or “down”, for delving deeper into a problem, or for facing fears. Even when we manage to get down the steps, the question remains – how to get back up?
