The source materials for the magazine relief sculptures are amassed from National Geographic periodicals published “for the increase and diffusion of geographic knowledge.” Also in the mix are fragmented bodies extracted from pornographic magazines as a dialectical compound to adhere politics of bodies in times of war to disembodied experiences of geographic knowledge. These magazines propagate their organizing principles and institute a system of order by selling knowledge and desire about other people, places and things to their consumers.
The elements found in the reproductions are isolated, cut, removed and reconfigured onto a network of images, interconnected by tape on verso. Now the intertwined fragments speak, touch and caress each other to create an alternate universe wherein, a human being kisses a skeleton, split in half by an orgy of escalating limbs pointing to nowhere; while a fellow human climbs an inverted ruin. This allows for the possibility for a new body of meaning – meaning that ceases to be solely dependent on its original context of cultural consumption.
While handling each page, I began to contemplate the epistemology of the printed surface, its materiality and being in the world. Despite its flatness, the individual sheet of paper reveals its volume and weight as it is bent, twisted and folded, drooping to gravity and wavering to air. By re-organizing this system, I envision other possibilities of knowing our relationships to each other and the world.