2009
Commissioned installation including tactile sculptures engaging the visually impaired and sculptures constructed from remnant facial peel
RE/FORMATIONS: Disability, Women, and Sculpture
Van Every/Smith Galleries
Davidson, NC
Curators: Jessica Cooley & Ann M. Fox, Ph.D.
Artists: Rebecca Horn, Nancy Fried, Harriet Sanderson, Judith Scott, Laura Splan
Trousseau and Doilies were part of an installation including tactile lace viruses and facial peel sculptures commissioned for RE/FORMATIONS: Disability, Women, and Sculpture. The exhibition at Van Every/Smith Galleries addressed the intersection between disability identity and female identity. RE/FORMATIONS examined disability not as mental or physical insufficiency limited to a small minority, but as a widespread and diffuse cultural identity, like race or sexual orientation. A special display of the unframed Doilies series was installed to engage the visually impaired through tactility. All visitors were invited to touch the lace sculptures designed after structures of viruses including SARS, HIV, and Herpes. Trousseau is a series of heirloom-like objects embellished with computerized embroidery that are constructed from remnant cosmetic peel applied to hands, breasts, and other parts of the body. The remnant material that results from the over-the-counter gel facial mask picks up and retains the detailed impression of texture and hair on skin. After covering my body with the gel mask, when dried, it is peeled off in one large "hide" to be used as "fabric" for the construction of the sculptures for Trousseau. The series explores culturally inherited notions of gender, class, beauty, and sexuality and include gloves, veils, handkerchiefs, and negligees reminiscent of the types of textiles that might be passed down from one generation of women to the next.
Trousseau and Doilies were part of an installation including tactile lace viruses and facial peel sculptures commissioned for RE/FORMATIONS: Disability, Women, and Sculpture. The exhibition at Van Every/Smith Galleries addressed the intersection between disability identity and female identity. RE/FORMATIONS examined disability not as mental or physical insufficiency limited to a small minority, but as a widespread and diffuse cultural identity, like race or sexual orientation. A special display of the unframed Doilies series was installed to engage the visually impaired through tactility. All visitors were invited to touch the lace sculptures designed after structures of viruses including SARS, HIV, and Herpes. Trousseau is a series of heirloom-like objects embellished with computerized embroidery that are constructed from remnant cosmetic peel applied to hands, breasts, and other parts of the body. The remnant material that results from the over-the-counter gel facial mask picks up and retains the detailed impression of texture and hair on skin. After covering my body with the gel mask, when dried, it is peeled off in one large "hide" to be used as "fabric" for the construction of the sculptures for Trousseau. The series explores culturally inherited notions of gender, class, beauty, and sexuality and include gloves, veils, handkerchiefs, and negligees reminiscent of the types of textiles that might be passed down from one generation of women to the next.
…Laura Splan presents the human-scaled, handmade, and the physical body through poetic mediation, reminding us of the inescapable material body…
…An ‘organic cyborg nature’ of the human is unveiled in Laura Splan’s work…Splan’s mixture of scientific and domestic…guides the viewer through an array of captivating approaches that challenge not only current media ideologies but also conceptual paradigms underlying today’s digital art, the question of disembodiment…
...While it is easy to emphasize the shock effect of Laura Splan’s work, it is much more interesting to make the viewer aware of the meaning behind it...
...Laura Splan disturbs our notions of beauty and femininity by crafting traditionally feminine objects out of unpredictable materials. By using the body as material for textile-based craft, historically thought of as women’s work, Splan shifts the conversation about her work in a way that hearkens back to Miriam Schapiro’s femmage pieces. But in its nearly painful intimacy with the body, Splan’s work has a fresh and universal application: all viewers have their own bodies to contemplate...
...Laura Splan transforms our human temporality into both comforting and unsettling art. It’s magical, heart-stopping...
...Shocking, sexy and uncomfortable are all words that could be used to describe the anatomical art of Laura Splan...these...pieces imply notions of femininity, domesticity, and familiarity alongside confrontational ideas of indulgence, mortality, and body politics...
...In Laura Splan’s mixed-media practice, the human body functions as both a physiological and cultural site: a conjunction of blood, bones, viruses and viscera masked by successive layers of social display...
...Splan swathes scientific observation in elegance. Splan’s creations demand a double take—a second look that reveals the scholarly rigor behind the pretty surface...
...art that’s fascinating and sometimes shocking . . . a wide variety of highly imaginative work: psychiatric drugs represented in hooked-rug pillows, embroidery on what appears to be skin stretched on hoops, pillows made of meat...wildly creative in such a precise way...
Exhibition sponsors: The National Endowment for the Arts, The Arts & Science Council, The Mary Duke Biddle Foundation, The Ethel Louise Armstrong Foundation, Wachovia Corporation, Davidson College Friends of the Arts, Davidson College, North Carolina Arts Council
