Statement

This work, expressed through a wide range of media including ethnographic video, animation, handmade paper, drawing, sculpture and painting, is an ongoing dialog about the organization of society through gender codes, rituals, and discrimination.

Gender ritual is explored in two documentary animations shot on location in Serbia and Montenegro. "Boy Brides Bachelors" takes place on a cold January night in Southeastern Serbia during a ritual called Surovari, an event in which men dress as women, even role playing explicit sexual acts. In "Ammunition for the Virgin," an interview with the reported last surviving member of the SE Balkan ritual in which a girl is brought up (by choice or force) as a boy in a household with no male heirs, poses challenging questions about women and choice in today's society.

"Pimp My Ride" investigates the commodification of motherhood, both from a sexual and racial perspective. "Maybe Mom," named after a saliva ovulation test system (a cylindrical, interior-lit unit translates the hormone levels in saliva into delicate, fern-like patterns), records the results of the ovulation cycle in 28 days of paintings. In the "Pregnancy Test" series, carefully drawn renderings of a variety of brands reposition these tests as architectural objects in space. "Missing Person Reports" profiles recently married brides who took their husbands' names through stylistic police sketches of missing persons. In "PPF," glossy digital prints elicit slick advertising campaigns in which ritual gifts for women are traded for sex.

A series of special projects engaging art and craft as social enterprise tools is an extension of my interest in alternatives to prescriptive social and capital models. They stem from a faith in the power of art as a vehicle for cultural change.