The work in my project "An apology made for the matter of material in metaversal times" (or, AMMMMT, for short) focus on illusory physical/digital division. The project critically engages with this imaged separation and the mutational powers it holds: the disenfranchisement of our own bodies, the desire to remake our world in digital form, and the attempt to manicure our physical world through the aesthetics of technology. This project interrogates its themes through philosophical and analogical lenses, and while these lenses may be types of abstractions, in this current moment, the distance between abstraction and physical reality is ever diminishing.
The works in AMMMMT employ a purposeful combination of virtual and visceral. The multiple installments of the project involve the transfiguration of abject sculptural objects, all constructed with papier-mâché. These sculptural pieces serve as critical links between process and concept. They are made using a paltry, pulpy material—papier-mâché—and these props then act in conjunction with, and counterpoint to, the advanced tools of digital imaging and photographic post-production.
AMMMMT as a whole pulls from various nodes of visual culture; references and representations appear throughout the series, as implied critiques of the outsized role image ecologies play in distortions of reality. While the focus is on contemporary antagonisms with technology and what a future interlinked with it may hold, the concerns of this project are ones repeated throughout human history, and references in the series are pulled from across time. The newest installment of the AMMMMT project utilizes imagery related to the myth of Persephone and Hades to evince the problematic dependency generated by technological saturation. Like Hades offering the temptation of a few pomegranate seeds, trapping Persephone in an endless cycle of Winter/Spring, Life/Death, many new technologies promise us personal nourishment while the driving motivations behind their uptick are controlled by the levers of power and capital.
