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
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 furniture for about 4 years now.
This is the first standing piece with a face.
I realised that the foot of a swivel chair was like a car wheel and it made me think about driving or steering your own identity because 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 it from 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. The figure is androgynous and whilst it was not a conscious decision I feel sure that the car based shootings of black individuals in the USA are being worked out 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. Some of the noises made are loud but many are low-level background noises that you really only notice when they stop .he figure hovers between chair or thing and figure depending on where you stand.
In order to end conflict, we have to try to understand the other party 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?