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more images at www.tartnyc.org and fortyacresofbandaids.blogspot.com/)
As a white woman making work about racial issues, my sculpture and photo installations have an ideological content that is intentional. Yet my work is also autobiographical - growing up in Yonkers, New York, I was racially sensitized from an early age. Yonkers is a town steeped in defacto segregation. My family lived just within the borders of the predominantly black school district, which led my father to pull me out of the elementary school I loved and to later instruct me to lie about my address so I could attend the "white" junior high school. My work is concerned with issues of white skin privilege and white guilt, but also more personal levels of meaning - such as sexual desire, cultural desire, desire for identity.
Developing my own visual language with which to enter the dialogue on race was fraught with starts and stops. I learned that I needed to look inward first, at self and family, as part of voicing larger concerns. My art materials became everyday objects - white sheets, bandaids, Ivory Soap. The resulting objects and images are not without an awkward humor, which makes the serious subject matter more approachable to viewers.
NEWS:
2009 NYFA Fellowship in Sculpture
2009-2010 A.I.R. Gallery Fellowship
www.airgallery.org
2009 Smack Mellon Hot Pick
www.smackmellon.org
Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture - Participant
Summer 2008
"Keep Hope Alive 2008"
Public Art Project
Fall 2008
http://keephopealive2008.blogspot.com
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS:
2009
"Uncharted Territory" curated by Terry Boddie
Oualie Arts, Orange, NJ
www.sightspecificprojects.com
2008
"Victim's Symptom"
Online
Curated by Ana Peraica
http://victims.labforculture.org/site/links/links
"Under the Skin"
Maison des Femmes
Paris, France
"Material Culture"
Longwood Arts Gallery
Bronx, NY
2007
"Desiderium"
Gallery Aferro
Newark, NJ
Dieppe Biennale
(with n b s p collective)
Dieppe, France
Aljira Emerge 8
Aljira Center for Contemporary Art
Newark, NJ
Things Fall Apart
Rush Arts Gallery, New York, NY
curated by Derrick Adams
The Field
Jamaica Center for Arts & Learning
Jamaica, NY
2006
Bearable Lightness...Likeness
P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center
curated by Franklin Sirmans
Kuyo
Onishi Gallery, New York, NY
CONTACT: saucenine@yahoo.com
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(more images at www.tartnyc.org and fortyacresofbandaids.blogspot.com)
SCROLL ALL THE WAY DOWN TO VIEW IMAGES
(more images at www.tartnyc.org and fortyacresofbandaids.blogspot.com)
SCROLL ALL THE WAY DOWN TO VIEW IMAGES
(more images at www.tartnyc.org and fortyacresofbandaids.blogspot.com)
SCROLL ALL THE WAY DOWN TO VIEW IMAGES
(more images at www.tartnyc.org and fortyacresofbandaids.blogspot.com)
The interior places the viewer in close contact with the "buried" brown bandaids, which are configured in a burst radiating from a central round bandaid. On the wall are images of people of various skin tones wearing the brown bandaids; random volunteers on Manhattan streets were asked to wear one - they were free to place them anywhere on their bodies. The photos have an awkward humor to them that makes the serious subject matter more approachable to viewers.
A plastic sheet of bandaids, approx. 6'x9', is stretched tautly across one corner of the gallery. From the exterior, only light toned bandaids are visible - a kind of web of pink and beige that conceals the brown bandaids beneath and the photos on the wall.
Ivory Soap and African Black Soap
approx. 3" x 5"
The word "Ivory" appears in black, thanks to an intervention with African Black Soap.
Mylar mirror, laser print, wooden box, white sheet.
The viewer looks through the hole and sees a reflection of their eye surrounded by white sheet, along with an image of Malcolm X pointing a camera at them.
I did a "mapping" of bandaids (excluding novelty cartoon characters) and came up with 23 skin shades, including dark brown "Ebonaid" brand bandaids for sale at a 99 cent store. With them, I made this wall sculpture.
(materials: bandaids, fabric; dim.: 3' x 3').
The African Burial Ground is an area of land in lower Manhattan where the remains of colonial-era African slave were disturbed during the construction of a federal government building; 40 acres is a symbolic amount of land representing the 40 acres and a mule promised, but never delivered, to freed slaves.
Protruding from the wall and constructed from bandaids, foam, wood.
Beige bandaids make up the handle and exterior, brown bandaids line the interior.
Color Photograph