"Sanguine Bedtime Stories" Installation with participant for "But Fear Itself" Exhibition, Lance Fung Gallery, New York, 2001
Catya Plate. "Sanguine Bedtime Stories" Installation with participant for "But Fear Itself" Exhibition, Lance Fung Gallery, New York, 2001, 2001.
Description:
"During the installation, a long forgotten memory comes to mind and takes shape. As I saturate the wall with red paint I am reminded of my father shooting Morphine into veins which had been pierced too often so that the injection needle would bounce off and make his blood splatter all over the walls. While stenciling the bio-hazard symbol in a pattern all over the red painted wall the horror of this experience has lost its potency and merely exists as a mark on the wall.
Hinged on the wall and placed on a black shelf, each three-dimensional ‘blood story’ is encased in wood and closes with a brass catch in the front. The viewer is invited to open my personal diary and by doing so emphasizes the blurred line between the private and the public. The golden color of the brass hardware which supports and adorns the wall-hanging objects conveys a sense of preciousness and mystery. But the red-painted and blood-stained outsides are imprinted with the bio-hazard symbol, adding the notion of danger to the pieces. Upon opening the leaves of the book, fragments of the human body drawn with my own blood on latex and sewn onto stretched maroon/red-colored and bloodstained bandanas are revealed. The use of fabric and color refers to the handkerchief code for blood fetish, vampirism and menstruation, which is utilized by some S/M and gay groups to tell the potential partner of their particular sexual preference."
Medium:
Installation
Tags:
books, interactive, fear, menstruation, bio-hazard, memory, father, splatter, red, addiction, pattern, blood, smell
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