Mixed Media
This installation uses appropriated twentieth-century Kodachrome color transparencies to reexamine issues of desire and domesticity. The original audience for the chromes - probably shot in the 1950s - were males connected to fraternal organizations. Using circular fragments and scale, the images are re-contextualized for the pleasure of a broad twenty-first century audience. Viewers may have a visceral reaction toe the Circles of Desire causing them to believe for just a moment that they are looking at something unknown or from the more distant past such as Ingres»s Turkish Bath rather than an image from a mid-twentieth century "Smoker." Sirens encourages the viewer to ponder how female beauty has changed over time.
The installation also has a sound loop. Opera singer, Courtenay Budd reads Eighteenth century poems by the Vietnamese poet and concubine Ho Xuan Huong (translation by John Balaban). Each poem is rich with sexual undertones and double entendre that reinforces and parallels the visual imagery. Concurrently the clotheslines serve as a common but resurrecting emblem of the domestic realm. Each weathered clothespin contains a single word of text excerpted from the sound loop. Gently moving shadows from the clotheslines suggest that in this dialog what is not revealed can be of equal importance.
You can view more of the Circles of Desire at Quinn the Eskimo.