From:
Gigantic Women/Miniature Work
S.A.I.C Gallery 2 Chicago, IL 1990
A collaboratively curated exhibition for fourteen women, School of the Art Institute MFA Graduates.

"If the miniature is a kind of mirror, it is a mirror of requited love. Like other forms of magic, it guarantees the presence of an absent other through either contagion or representation. When the miniature exists simply as a representation, it functions as sympathetic magic; when it is enclosed with a lock of hair, a piece of ribbon, or some other "part" of the other, it functions as contagious magic."
- Susan Stewart, On Longing

Slides 1-6
The Uterus and its Appurtenances from behind
Oak wood table, lace doilies, porcelain dishes,
metal doll utensils, cast silver, blood
Table 28'' high, 45'' diameter; dish 4'' diameter

Slide 6
Family Jewels
1990
Oak wood, cast bronze
14x24x9"

Slide 7
On Longing
1990
Oak wood, lead frames, glass bottles,
wax, hair, blood, semen
3x6.5x3.5"

Slide 8
On Parting
1990
Oak wood, model pelvis, glass bottles,
gold foil, wax, blood
3x6.5x3.5"

Slide 9
On Reconciliation
1990
Oak wood, satin, silver
3x6.5x3.5"

The Uterus and its Appurtenances from Behind:
A round oak table is laid with lace, four miniature place settings and a central serving dish. In the central dish, a miniature sterling cast uterus rests in a small pool of my blood. Places set with Lungs and Bronchial Tree, Labyrinth of the Inner Ear, Seventh Cervical Vertebra, Larynx and Tracheal Rings, each with their own sterling name plate and bit of blood ring the table. With language lifted from her anatomy texts, this piece evokes memories of my mother, caught between work and family. As dark charms, the silver body parts in blood subvert the traditional function of playing house. Doll plates laid with human sweet meats reveal the personal toll behind decorous bourgeois housekeeping, and confront the reality of life consumed in life.

Family Jewels:
Each of the three canning jars is capped with a transformed Buddhist Thought Gem displaying at the center an image of the sectioned uterus, and on either side the contraceptive pill dispenser, and the name of
the French abortifacient, RU486. Thought Gems are traditionally conceived of as pearls that fulfills wishes. Pearls develop in mollusks around irritants that cannot otherwise be expelled. "Family Jewels" are power objects of reproductive freedom addressing the complex nexus of joy and suffering arising from the possibility of
giving birth.

On Parting:
As the gilded pelvic girdle contemplates its own insides from a distance, so a woman confronts the emptying and separation of herself in the process of birthing.

On Longing:
The bottled pubic hair, menstrual blood and semen become explicitly sexual keepsakes, emblematic of the "distanced and abstracted sexuality" of parted lovers. (Susan Stewert)

On Reconciliation:
On Reconciliation reflects an uneasy truce with biological limitations and potential. It approaches reconciliation with the "fantastic shackles" of mothering.
(Marguerite Duras)

< portfolio