As a trans person, living in a new kind of human form, I am interested in how structural devices like the body, language, and identity limit and shape the expressions they claim to support. Transness often exhibits as a problem of embodiment, but it is also a problem with depiction - how do you represent yourself in a language that lacks the words in a culture lacking trans customs? You build new tools. My work originates in the positive generative possibilities of breaking with conventions, like the rectangular picture format.
I use photos of my body to make resin plates that are supported by anthropomorphic sculptural "frames". Framing is contextualizing. My handmade wooden frames situate cropped photos of my body within a consolidated amalgam of social signifiers. The frames use flat, graphic, code-switching language to reference the body, architecture, language, and signage. Using deceptively simple language, the work evades simple reading due to its complex representational dynamics.
My work destabilizes distinctions between image/object, sign/signified, and sculpture/photography/drawing/painting; collapsing multiple provocations into one sculptural form and frustrating attempts to distill a simple reading. These objects are glyphs with organs, embodied drawings, and architectural utterances; unstable pictographs that complicate the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves.
KC Crow Maddux-2023