This is also a sound piece an excerpt of the 14 types of beats the chair emits sound can be heard here. https://vimeo.com/199888220 first shown in the Berlin gallery Tete.
This is a leatherette executive swivel chair with a footstool and massage function. This piece is a development in a practice that has dealt with performing furniture to understand and undermine objectification.
This is the first standing piece I made with a "face".
I realised that the foot of a swivel chair was like a car searing wheel and it made me think about driving or steering your own identity because in this sculpture it serves as a face.
Finally, the central part of the face has a barrel that reminded me of a gun and this got me thinking about shooting identity, or which identities are more vulnerable than others.
This work is a layered metaphor for finding peace with who you are and attempting to secure and take control of your identity and wrest the steering wheel from a path of objectification.
This is also my first sculpture with an audible "voice". The massage function is concealed in the chest and has been altered in such a way to make audible up to 14 different beats. These beats from the figure run from gunfire to a slow or rapid heartbeat. Both sounds reverberate from the chest.
Whilst it was not a conscious decision, I soon realised that the car-based shootings of black people in the USA are being processed in this piece. The footstool which forms the hood of the figure has the text "footstool do not sit here" written on it. As "sitting" on black individuals has constituted some of the most shocking images of police brutality on black people I think this is apt. The figure is androgynous as victims are male, female and trans. The
figure is hooded. Some of the noises made are loud but many are low-level background noises that you really only notice when they stop. The figure hovers between a chair or thing and figure depending on where you stand.
In order to end the conflict, a strategy could be to try to understand the other party (weaponised police and citizens that insist on shooting unarmed black individuals) as fully as possible.
What is it that people see when they see a "black figure" and shoot, could it be this animal, object, figure thing with a loaded face?
Shown at Berlin Gallery tȇte
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