The objects I make have to do with the imperfect alignment between our perceptions and objective reality, and with our subjective investment in those perceptions.
Perception has been a core theme in my work over the years, particularly in relation to identity-formation and meaning-making. I’m interested in the constructed and plastic nature of how we see ourselves and the world, the contextual factors of the past and present that shape perception, and reading’s significant role in those formative contexts.
We register a bare fraction of what is before us. Extraordinarily complex and powerful organ that it is, our mind sorts through and filters the billions of phenomena surrounding us second by second into a much smaller but interpretable subgroup, and then makes meaning of that handful of data points.
The social systems in which we are embedded materially inform how our minds execute this filtering and interpretive work. While now rivaled by digital media, in the larger history of Western civilization, no medium has been a more influential expression of those systems than the book.
Gesturing toward the paradoxical inseparability of books’ empowering and liberatory function on the one hand, and their constraining and oppressive function on the other, I explore the relationships among what we think we perceive, the “biblio-contexts” we inhabit, and how systems of power shape those contexts.
My intention is to prompt reflection on what we think we know.
