Give Me Enough and I'll Ask for More
Installation, 2012
Faced with an increasingly commercial identity, I ask, “what is the difference between what we want and what we need?” I am acutely aware that commercial practices not only indicate what to buy, but also who to be. Reflective of our society’s inflated expectations of women, I consider the promises that we make to each other and ourselves, as well as our personal and collective expectations and how they are routinely met and unmet. Pretty as a party and strange enough to be a carnival, Give Me Enough and I’ll Ask for More is an embodied space that contemplates joy, excess, sensuality, and desire.
You enter the gallery through a red, hand-cut vinyl form inspired by a heart, a butt or breasts. Inside you are surrounded by a red trough filled with pure, refined sugar. I call this “waist/waste” of the room, where the waste of excess accumulates at my physical waist.
The center of the gallery is covered by a hand-woven pink ribbon net holding down large pink balloons. As the balloons react to the light the membrane of the latex oscillates between transparent and opaque, warm and gooey. Literally inflated, these balloons are tantalizing, fun, and beautiful, but also illustrate how something so empty can look so full.
From each balloon dangles a suggestive hand loop, that tells us--just as the sign did at the door--that you are welcome to take a balloon. At once a gift and potentially an absurd burden, these balloons are a moment of contemplation in the space.
This installation was my MFA Thesis Exhibition displayed in the Trisolini Gallery at Ohio University, Athens, OH, USA.