Shedding Skin

‘If a Tree Falls in a Forest’ looks into the contextualisation of objects as artwork, an understanding of the concepts behind readymades coined by Marcel Duchamp. Once we alter the context of objects such as the hoover (Jeff Koons), they begin to exist in a different way, not just as a physical commodity. The title relates to this idea in that it refers to whether an object really can exist outside of how we understand it.


If a Tree Falls in a Forest

Title: Rant, Regret, Repeat
Materials: aluminium, street ink
Dimensions: 30.5cm x 41cm

Rant, Regret, Repeat is a comment on the bipolar disorder symptom of rage. Each rant is is scrawled on to aluminium and then redacted with wire wool. As the ranting and regreting build there is a loss of comprehension and the words become irrelevant and disappear, reflecting how rage eventually dissipates.

Rant, Regret, Repeat, 2021

Circular, Alejandro Urrutia’s second solo exhibition NAC Gallery, brings together a series of pieces created after 3 years abroad. The exhibition proposes a cross between architecture and sculpture; in which circular, curved, concave and convex shapes generate cycles, wave movements formed by ridges and depressions that activate forces to create equilibrium.
Transition, movement, and return to the beginning, to start again; circular is inspired by natural cycles as perpetual movements in nature with ever changing effect: planetary orbits, day and night, sea waves, the seasons of the year, sunrise and sunset, and life itself that is renewed. Overlapping cycles and regularities, perpetual movements in constant transformation. Circular proposes an invitation to change, and to movement, to interpret the rhythm of mutations and to forge new alliances that avoid stagnation.

Circular

An exploration of movement of two bodies which meet in passing. A surreal possibility of the flesh inhabiting an undefined space, seeking to understand the choreography of a warp.

From the album You're Trouble by Sin Maldita (Unguarded, 2020)

https://www.clotmag.com/interviews/sin-maldita-tim-roths-new-androgynous-and-avant-garde-pop-musical-identity

Me Me Me (for Sin Maldita)

“The Sex Lego” was made in response to the sexual mobility of the human body; looking at bodies through the lens of dildos and prosthetics, questioning what is the body and what is not? If we see sex as an innocent act of playing, we can perceive our body or dildos as anatomical or artificial toys. If we see sex as an innocent act of playing, wouldn’t people who make love in a non-heterosexual/unconventional way be more acceptable in this world? The sex logo gives people the opportunity to think of sex and experience body through a playful and innocent perspective.


“Sex Lego” 2020, plaster, wood, silicone.

Glass is blown through a copper wire form then incorporated into mixed media works where repurposed aluminum, steel and copper are combined with plastic and enamel paint. 

Alluding to representation of botanical forms, these works are abstracted and almost alien or surreal appearing plant formations. The works can exist singularly or installed together in an installation format. 

Hand blown, sandblasted glass, repurposed copper and aluminum, plastic fencing, wire and enamel paint. Approx. 14” x 16” x 10”, 2019

Flirt & Divert

Inspired by the social implications of hugs among individuals, Maë Chan aims to present the emotions contained in the embrace through tactile exploration of dynamic forms. Through a series of installations using affect-driven materials, colors, and shapes, Chan dissects the denotative qualities of intimacy and boundary resulting from how our society defines “touch.”

Each installation enacts the carousel of emotions within every embrace, ranging from joy to disgust, politeness to fear. In particular, Chan is interested in conveying that which is socially correct but not always sincere, betrayed through the intimate gestures of wrapping and touching. Some pieces lock tightly in intimacy, whereas others exist in precarious tension with a gap between them. Some stand totally separated as an expression of boundary.

Chan’s work spans across multiple contexts -- from sculpture to conceptual furniture and spatial installations. The human body acts as a central aspect regardless of the context, as through an intimate interaction with the human form, a new form is created.


HUGGING PORTRAIT: INTIMACY / BOUNDARIES

100% handmade.
Stoneware sculpture in two pieces with multiple combinations. Carved and finished with engobe and glaze.
Piece 1 of 2: 17 x 17 11.5 cm.
Piece 2 of 2: 17 x 11.5 x 11.5 cm.
2019

Dwellings #6 (2019)

The second part of a triadic collaboration which brings together dance, sound and a visual aesthetic that are drawn from and reference pervasive socio-political forces that organise modern human activity, as understood by the artists. Still Looking Good is a catalogue for the enabling infrastructures—physical, ethical, economic, biological—of human “Progress, Growth & Development”; a decades-old ideology. During the launch of the Orion Spacecraft, a video of which can be found on YouTube, the commentator can be heard to repeat over and over, “still looking good”. It is a statement that introduces uncertainty and appears hoping rather than confirming. A question is asked: Still Looking Good?

Still Looking Good

Selection of self portraits taken during the first part of the covid-19 pandemic

Quarantine Casual

It belongs to the "scrap paper" series: landscapes of the mind, fragments, which like waste paper are thrown by someone and collected by others, into a perpetual recycling of existence.

Medium: water oil / warped,stiff, PVC forex

Oceans

After having met with Donald Trump when Tootsie Warhol was working as a civil rights lawyer, Tootsie Warhol dressed and performed as a satirical Donald Trump inside the Whitney Museum of American Art (New York) and in front of the entrance for two months to highlight the lack of work addressing President Trump in the marquee Whitney Biennial 2019 show.

MAKING THE BIENNIAL GREAT AGAIN! (2019)

(2016)
1.5’ x 2’ x 2’
Argon gas, liquid mercury, glass, wire, play sand, plywood, transformer, silicone caps

Installed at the Smith Center for Healing and the Arts
Exhibition Life Soundtrack
Washington, DC, USA

Unit


Nokomis Fragments
Found and altered objects
Dimensions variable
2019-ongoing


Nokomis Fragments

Our personal experiences only allow us to understand a fraction of what the larger world is. In a digital age we share a world of constantly changing images which give us the ability to develop a sophisticated understanding of visual language. My intention is to share my experiences of daily life in Adana, observing the traditions and rituals of coexistence. The traditional material captures memories and craftsmanship.

 

In this work I have brought two contrasting elements together: feminine materials and masculine images. This leads us to question the word ‘yorgan’.

 

A yorgan is a hand-quilted duvet which is often passed down through generations as an heirloom. In families, a yorgan is often imbued with memories and associations.  Children remember grandmothers’ yorgan, and pass them down to their own grandchildren. In Adana, neighbours share everything, including yorgan when guests appear in the winter. A request to borrow a yorgan from a neighbour would not seem strange.

 

In my pieces, I have subverted the yorgan, which is usually associated with providing comfort, protection and security. The quilted images refer to ‘security’, but of a very different kind. Images of war on a quilted yorgan encourage us to consider the price families’ pay in times of conflict; objects that normally comfort and protect us are decorated with images of mechanical warfare that can kill on mass.

 

Who or what do we trust? Where do we hide from our fears? Can we retain our real identity by ‘hiding under the covers’? The beauty of a traditional flower design is transformed into heavy artillery. Can we ever challenge the social order and its structures of power, authority and control?

 

What is the relationship between the home and its daily objects? Is home a place to escape the state? Is the duvet an object of safety or oppression?

The War Heirloom

A wheatpasting campaign that ran late last year in Washington, D.C. Posters urged Black residents to apply for reparations, report gentrification, and use the FUBU hotline +1(833)937-3828 to vent. Posters were hung in rapidly gentrifying historically Black DC neighborhoods. The campaign was done in response to the Washington Post article claiming that DC had the highest intensity gentrification of any US city:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2019/03/19/study-dc-has-had-highest-intensity-gentrification-any-us-city/?outputType=amp

FUBU Wheatpaste Campaign 

Powering the Cloud explores the connections between new media technology and archaic power, looking at geology, resources of power, materiality of technology and the geopolitical concerns with our future use of technology. I am interested in creating images through the construction and deconstruction of digital photographs, coding and unintentional errors that occur in our technological experiences. The work will consists of digitally rendered sculptural objects made from coal from a local quarry in Scotland, combined with my glitched photographic works. 

Powering the Cloud

An empty apartment implies that no one lives there, but one could wonder about the imaginations and memories lingering in those silent rooms. Through the images, the apartment becomes a representation of the mind, hosting scenes of raw imagination, unbothered by rational thought.
We might consider a fully decorated room; a space loaded with memories and life experiences, to be a life goal.
In this situation, the thought of nothing being there appears most unsettling. While we let these spaces challenge our
imaginations, they propose an undefinable number of options and opportunities. The mere multiplicity of the situation is destined to make one overwhelmed with the potential of that empty space, fearful of a state of heightened entropy. Resulting in a kind of dangerous emptiness, one that feels indefinable, and eventually reveals itself as the opposite. We feel the space between the decisions, an uncertainty which makes it unable to get a hold of a choice that feels right.



Phantoms Among Imaginations

While working on this series of self-portraits I spent a lot of time with myself, contemplating and questioning different aspects of my life, particularly the rules and boundaries I set for myself. Who would I find?

A key part of my process involves inquiry and reflection. With other projects this is a difficult task, and it was even more challenging when considering myself as the subject. Could I truly confront myself, even the darkest parts, and remain unbiased? I decided to approach this challenge with the assumption that all of my rules and boundaries had no merit, poking holes in them from all sides. What would femininity mean to me now? Who would I find?

Growing up in post-Soviet Russia I subscribed to the traditional conventions that a woman must get married in her early 20s, have children before 30, and silently endure abuse her entire life. I was taught it was humiliating to be single for long periods of time. I was taught that older, unmarried women hold a particularly low social status regardless of wealth or occupation. I believed that couples with no children were imperfect and that a woman must keep silent in order to save her family. Today, in my late 30s, I don't fit the traditional Russian mold: I don't have a husband, kids, or a “normal” job with a stable income. Who am I?  
I grew up in a Russian family in which male physical and emotional abuse was normal. The brunt of this abuse came from my father in the form of punishment for disobeying his rules. Nobody talked about it. My family and I kept quiet. I believed that I deserved his abuse. In my teens, I was sexually abused and sexually harassed. I was terrified to walk in my own neighborhood. Like I was taught, I blamed myself for looking older, for being beautiful and sexy. Like I was taught, I locked away the pain somewhere I couldn’t access. I became a true Russian woman. I too endured physical suffering. I too swallowed the pain and remained outwardly untouched and unaffected. 

“Today not only in North America and Europe but in the third world also women are coming forward to protest their oppression as women—to fight against rape, bride-burning, female circumcision, inheritance systems which term them into propertiless dependents, unequal pay, lack of access to work, and sexual violence inside and outside the family.” (“Patriarchy: The Analysis of Women’s Oppression,” Gail Omvedt, 1986)

My portraits express an introspection not only as an individual, but as a collective female consciousness, in which I discovered a lot of pain, sorrow, and guilt that have been suppressed for years.

While self-reflecting for this series, I also found inside myself is a beautiful flower, soft and beautiful. It was vulnerable, it was fragile. I danced with myself in my own world, feeling my own body, my own boundaries, my own sensuality. Becoming truly vulnerable is terrifying. Will I be judged by friends and family, by society, for showing my naked body? I unearthed shame for my own body deep inside myself. But becoming vulnerable was a first step in discovering my own truth and my relationship to it. This series of self-portraits is the result of listening more intently to my feelings, thoughts, and desires. I discovered a more profound love and appreciation for my own skin, comfort and security in being open to others. I believe we are all searching for a sense of balance, the balance between comfortable and uncomfortable, a shaky state of zen.

This self-portrait series is the sum of a deep introspective process that led to the empowerment of me as a woman. I found respect, immersive beauty, and personal power by uncovering myself, petal after petal, feeling, sitting with myself, accepting.



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