SPREAD

Above image: in situ at the Art Gallery of Guelph, 2019

Photo Credits: Denis Farley

Impacted by discussions of neoliberalism and capitalism stimulated by the economic recession in 2008, and the popularity of vampirism in popular culture during this recession, this series of blood-letting furniture responds to the relationships between capitalist ideology and popular culture.

These furniture-like objects are familiar, relate to domestic space and are based off of body gestures such as arched backs and exposed necks that reference visual tropes from a variety of TV shows and films such as True Blood and the Twilight series. Vampirism in our popular culture has expanded past horror and fear to include romance and the acceptance or normalization of the vampire.

 What politics are embedded in our visual culture? How do objects perform? How do they reflect or direct behavior? What agency do they have? This work proposes to consider embodied experience, representations and associations of immortality, power, youth and desirability within our consumption- based culture.