W.A.S.P.

‘W.A.S.P.’ is a series of sculptures which draw from objects that relate directly to Civil-War era USA to confront the ever-present problematics of ‘white heritage’ and the subsequent and inevitable identity crisis – one which continues to pervade the collective memory of the South today. Using burnt floor boards removed from their original domestic setting, I draw from the narratives present in popular culture such as Gone With the Wind and Birth of a Nation which depict the total devastation of domestic spaces in the ‘Old South’ to generate a feeling of loss, nostalgia and resentment. The Antebellum daguerreotype-portraits have wasp nests growing from their faces. Aesthetically, the intention is to allude to an architecture of the subconscious mind, while also drawing a link between historical WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) domination of politics and economics to the architectural form of the natural wasp nest as a nightmarish space constructed by external ‘influences’. These sculptures draw fragmented architectural and human form together, grounded in the historiographic to inspect the development of racial and cultural prejudices which are only tending to get worse as the contemporary political climate continues to thrive off of difference and intolerance. Therefore, though this series is grounded in objects and events which are a century and a half old, it is particularly pertinent today as it looks at the past as a medium through which to speculate about and reflect on the future.