Culture, Identity & the Visual Arts: Who Am I? [ page 5 ]

My preoccupation with these observations brings me to my most recent body of work, The Danger of Being Born. Uniting these newest works is an examination of the origins of individual identity as a reflection of the origins of collective or cultural identity. Through a process of deconstruction, I return repeatedly to the earliest and most critical moments of individual identity development and the powerful role of those who choose to engage in this process… I look to infants and children and to the parents who give birth to them. In the debate over nature versus nurture, I embrace elements of both in considering questions of identity. Can identity be reduced simply to a cultural construct? While I assert that nature typically assigns certain fundamental attributes through biological or genetic codes, nurture has the powerful potential to either support or subvert those attributes. It is revealing and instructive to consider the origins of identity and related works of art through the lens of Deconstruction.

The theory of Deconstruction allows a glimpse into ways in which we experience and interpret our world through the primary vehicle of language, which mediates all experience. It reveals the unconscious influences (through language) of familial, social and cultural ideology on our sense of self and our worldview, on our interpretation or “reading” of the world around us. Deconstruction claims that language is subject to a continuous deferral of meaning, thwarted in its efforts to convey any fixed or stable meaning. Works of art are included in Deconstruction’s analysis of structuralist theory through the subcategory of Semiotics. As non-linguistic signifiers, works of art have the potential to be as evasive in their meaning as language. Individual interpretations of works of art are fueled by the course of individual lives, by the accumulation of memories, experiences, influences, and associations that are unique to the individual. In The Danger of Being Born, stones are metaphorical signifiers for human beings, bearing evidence of their being in the world. Like stones exposed to the elements, we are individually shaped and altered by our environment, an environment that can be unmercifully harsh. We may be scarred, polished, crushed, smoothed, worn down, discarded, and broken, and like stones, we carry with us the cumulative evidence of our environmental influences.

Language and wordplay is woven into a number of these new works, most significantly through titles as in a series of graphite drawings titled Potential for Disaster: Razing the Children. These drawings are based on an exhibit at the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry. Lifeless embryos and fetuses at various stages of in utero development are displayed in glass containers filled with formaldehyde and other preservatives. They are anonymous in their presentation, skin bleached of color. They float in a darkened and recessed space behind thick glass smeared with the handprints of curious adults and children alike. They become the “other”, a spectacle of the living gazing at the dead.

In hearing the title, it is generally assumed that “razing” is spelled R-A-I-S-I-N-G. This is a common expression referring to the rearing and nurturing of children. But the same sound represents the word R-A-Z-I-N-G, meaning to tear down or demolish. This is the spelling used in the title, reflecting the experience of children who suffer rather than flourish under the power and authority of parents or caregivers, whether biological or not.