Capitalist Plaid (2019 - present):
Capitalist Plaid (2019 - present) / American Appraisal (2016 - 2019)
Eva Hesse once asserted that Minimalism was a metaphor for the confinement of society. This is my springboard.
The "American Appraisal" series began as a direct response to my internal processing of the USA 2016 election, the #MeToo movement's wave of momentum, and a phrase that was spoken to me by a man, “Your value to us diminishes.”
Interpreting "value" indicates a complex semiosis. The word refers to variations of such polarized attributes as hues vs. achromatics, conjures incredibly disparate imagery serving as signifiers, and can be humanistic, economic, or materialistic in its usage. When coupled with a grid (actual or implied, disrupted or not), it suggests a system. Language is a political system.
While scrutinizing and auditing what dictates my own relationship(s) to the word 'value' as an American, bisexual/queer, cis-gendered, white, woman artist within our current political climate, this body of work evolved. It became the series "Capitalist Plaid," an examination of the larger consequences of late-stage capitalism within a society which commonly suggests that "value" is only reserved for that which is quantifiable. While making work in this series, I often contemplate intersectional feminism, 'objecthood' being imposed on humans, nepotism vs. meritocracy, the role of art in America (and its market), and/or the history of painting.
