Senior Exhibition 2014 Gallery
Preview
Creation Date
2014
Description
Materials: bottles, hemp, inkjet prints, video, bottle caps
Dimensions: 10.5 x 8 x 6'
Project Advisor: John Shimon and Julie Lindemann
Year of Graduation: 2014
Medium
Sculpture
Rights
Copyright for this work is held by the artist.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License.
COinS
Artist Statement
This installation is a product of Lawrence University student's participation efforts collaborating with my themes of gender identity and alcohol consumption on a college campus. I encouraged students to help with material collecting, construction of the piece, and critical discussions of gender identity and the impact of alcohol on college culture. People on campus donated all the bottles, which I used to create an anatomical presentation of my own gender identity; I identify as being female with masculine traits. The labels on the bottles were designed as a brand that includes themes of my identity exploration and social interactions involving alcohol that adults, specifically college-aged adults, may relate to.
The television is placed where anatomically the clitoris would be; the video depicts Lawrence students and myself exploring gender norms specifically with clothing and how one physically presents them self. In the video, participants presented their own gender identity(s) and then also experiment with other ways to physically present themselves. Some chose to explore the bi-modal model of gender (male or female), whereas others mixed and matched materials that could be normative for one or many gender identities.
College students experiment with limits, preferences, and comfort zones within both gender identity and alcohol culture realms. These types of explorations can be influential and educational in how one carries themselves throughout the rest of their life.