This series of work is made up of visual parodies of sexual phrases from the local dialect; it brings together various art mediums to represent culture, history and language as all interlinked. It includes four paintings, installations, food (Arepas) and living sculptures. The living sculptures were originally intended to be one life size life like sculpture of the female form covered in three plume match box covers as a pun 'Hot-Woman'. However I was not able to arrange the pieces of the figure to stand so I decided to leave it in pieces as it was and accept that my role is merely to accomodate a process and not force a preconceived ending. It looked like dismembered body parts and so the title, 'Ah Mash She Up' felt most appropriate. This positioned the piece as a human sacrifice within the spiritual system I was creating. The vernacular expression links sexuality with violence and I seek to take that further and add crime in general by calling it a sacrifice.
The Exotic Erotic
Sexuality’s link to the primal instincts, violence, sin, and all other abjection eroticizes all that is ‘other’; all that stands in opposition to the dominant culture. This is the innate lust or primal attraction to all things different to one’s customs and as a consequence to danger. The establishment of the status quo has long been defined by and described as white middle class culture. This already illustrates that all ‘colored’ people are sexualized as the 'other'; making them a desirable/desired threat.
"A lovely little creature but sly, spiteful, malignant perhaps, like everything else in this place."
( Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys, Penguin Books pg 45)
( Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys, Penguin Books pg 45)
The Entrance
The Cleansing
The Offering
Worshipers : 'Rude Gyals'
Human Sacrifice: 'Ah Mash She Up'
Female and Male aspects of Divinity
