Shadow Play, Interaction
The Interaction series informed my work beyond representation and through the study of perception, via the engraved marking on Plexiglas. The transition of the mark from the Plexiglas to the wall, relates to how visual perceptions can shift. Peggy Phelan says, “The psychic subject transforms differences into the same, and converts the “other” into the familiar grammar of linguistics, visual and physical body of the same”. With this theory in mind, I construct identity as percievable only through a relationship to an other, which is to say, it is a form of both resisting and claiming the other, declaring the boundary where the self diverges from and merges with the other. I reference Kara Walker’s silhouette installation, which is activated by the viewer’s response to the aggressive subject matter, and also Egon Schiele’s expressionistic mark making in his work.