| MARIA DRISCOLL MCMAHON |  |
SANDRA STEPHENS | |
BEN ALTMAN |
 |
|
 |
|
 |
"I am a rural artist." Those five words carry a freight of stereotypes and prejudices. Maria's work glories in and confronts this predicament. She works with wearable sculpture – suits covered with burdock burrs – video interviews of residents in her small upstate NY town, and drawings. |
"I turn identities inside out". Sandra is fascinated by construction and reconstruction of identity: internally by the self, from the outside by stereotypes and visual culture. She uses video installations – the viewer as part of the piece, the piece responds to the viewer. | "I torture myself in my basement". The government won’t release torture photos; Ben Altman makes his own. He acts as victim, perpetrator, complicit witness. He screws or glues his segmented prints to dog-cages, bed-frames, wire mesh, and mirrors. |
||
| -- We create objects, interactive & sculptural installations, video & street performances with the broad theme of internal and external construction, negotiation - & destruction - of identity & stereotypes. | -- Our figures have agency. Our objects empower viewers as complicit participants, as centers of process and experience. | -- We complicate and push against dichotomies and hierarchies: self/other, perpetrator/victim, rural/urban, black/white, family/stranger, performer/observer. | ||
|
||||
FOR MORE INFO CHECK OUT: http://skinhides.blogspot.com/ AND |
||||
