“Artifacts” is a photographic series that I made while in graduate school. I was working with questions of art history, identity, and ownership of antiquities. Appropriation was a big thing back then and I felt that the entire history of art was fair game for making new work.
My process: I searched for art history slides from the slide library showing work from classical antiquity – Greek, Roman, and Egyptian statues, mainly. Many of these slides had gotten a lot of usage over the decades, and were scratched, discolored, and dusty. Once I made my selections, I projected them on people. In some cases I would project a second slide in the background; sometimes subject matter of the two slides were related, sometimes they were not.
These images were initially made on 35mm negatives, and then 2.25 inch transparencies and 6x7cm negative film.
Even though I was a painting major in graduate school, these photographic images eventually became my entire MFA thesis show.
I received feedback at that time that many considered these images deeply disturbing.
After grad school, I continued this concept with my “Revisions” series. And to this day, I am still considering doing more “Artifacts” and “Revisions”.
Note: Some of these images were exhibited again in 2018 at my mini-survey “Modern History” at Coastline Community College Art Gallery.
