To Dust She Returns
My installations and performances act as cultural and social documents transmitting information about the humdrum events and everyday realities of our lives through formal representations and juxtapositions. Some aspects of art and life tend to be disengaged. The mundane details of everyday existence are not often suffused with an openly acknowledged aesthetic component. To Dust She Returns consists of a porcelain and feather re-creation of a flowery wallpaper design as a formal and theatrical installation. The inherent disorder and labor of everyday life are components of this installation and threaten the veneer of order and propriety. At regular intervals a well-dressed female performer removes a flower/duster from the wall to dust the installation, located in one of the more intimate rooms of the Anschutz gallery at Denver Art Museum. Thus, despite its grandeur, this piece continues to be maintained, not behind closed doors but publicly throughout the duration of the exhibition. This pairing of a grand public installation with a performer engaged in maintaining and controlling her surroundings explores boundaries between the messy details of daily life and the order of grand cultural objects.