ARTIST STATEMENT

My work invites the audience into a surreal world. The sculptures are an exploration of human's relationship to non-human objects and systems that they encounter and interrupt each day. In most of my works I try to create systems between my sculptures. The sculptures and the systems they create become a part of the architecture  and an extension of it for the audience to interact with. I use the aesthetic values of the sculptures like movement, color, shape, and site to play with how the audience perceives the sculpture and the site that surrounds it. These aesthetics values lure the audience into a system and a site without them being aware of it and allows me to experiment with different unconscious reflexes and preconceptions that humans have against non-human creatures and objects.

ISLAND OF DOUBT

The little cars Wally, Dory, Mortimer, Ferguson and Baxter move back and forth in different combinations on the wood curvy tracks. They report their location to the brain of the system that functions as a communication line between all of them. The brain remembers and communicates the position of each sculpture to the other that is in proximity. For instance, when Wally and Dory are the farthest from each other they might realize they miss each other and therefore go into a certain state of behavior that reflects their sadness while if they are closest to each other they might mingle. Once every so often, they move together or towards each other. The tracks never cross so the sculptures can never touch each other unless they are already tangled together, coupled, from the beginning.

When the visitors walk they first see the movement of the fabric sculptures and then realize the tracks. All of the electronics in the ceiling are somewhat hidden because the tracks are designed to blend into the architecture and become an appendage to it. The very complicated system on the ceiling is reflected by not so complicated
movements at eye-level. While the tracks blend into the architecture, the vertical sculptures jump out and drool onto the floor as if they are reaching for the audience. The piece facilitates a physical relationship between the architecture and the residents in it.

As the visitors enter the installation and walk through they have to change their behavior in the space according to the sculptures or interrupt the system. They may choose to interrupt the system by pushing the pieces out of their way, pulling them or just holding them. This physical interruption by the audience, interrupts the relationships within the system. Every time the audience chooses to hold one of the sculptures a second more than sculpture is supposed to stay in that place, the counter in the brain that remembers and reports where the sculptures are or what they are supposed to do next gets interrupted and confused. As a result the relationships between the objects alter.

In contrast, the audience is also interrupted by the sculptures. When placed in a crammed space where the audience has to walk through the sculpture to get to the other side, visitors that do not want to touch the pieces will have to navigate around the pieces and walk in a zigzag like pattern or get hit by them.

My aim in this project is to investigate relationships between mechanical objects that have physical qualities within a closed system and the system’s relationship to the architecture and the audience. It is a meditation on how two very separate entities like the visitor and the art piece can effect each other physically but not be aware of the unseen consequences that may follow their physical interaction. These pieces were made months before the we had to go into quarantine and think about our physical interaction to each other. It is not a piece about the epidemic but about physical relationships between objects, spaces and humans that live inside them. Given the situation I can’t help but reflect back and realize that the interaction between the art work and the audience is similar to how we have to interact with one another in everyday life today.

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RAISING QUILLS

I stretch above and below to connect the ends in a new way. They’re a part of me and I of them. I hold out my quills to extend my home. If you and I should share a touch, I would show you the spaces between. I move on my own, not with the wind, not towards the sun, nor do I need water. I contain all within myself. You decide who I am, what I am, where I am from.

SYMPATHETIC MOTION

At the time I was working on these series, I was experimenting with movement that is relative to the form of sculpture but that can also be randomized by mechanics and electronics. I was specifically interested in how behaviors and feelings are evoked through observed movement, and why humans instinctively characterize something that is in motion. I wanted to further understand how humans' reaction to a moving object changes depending on different design qualities and motions of the objects. The design decisions therefore are made in order to exploit the human’s need to bring moving objects to life and give them an experience of interacting with something non- identifiable and non-human.

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METAMORPHOSIS

Metamorphosis series was created in the form of an interactive installation. The installation puts visitors through an unexplained environment, and gives them space to discover the unknown. They experience the piece by wearing the garments and experience the unfamiliar space they have stepped into. They are also given a chance to rediscover their own body with the interactive garments they are wearing that are inspired by playfulness of children .