A Million in Prizes (2021 - )

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I’ve been thinking about the endless stream of imagery that we are exposed to daily, and how numb we have become to the visual world. This led me to consider how to make art that denies the viewer access to an image they want to see.

 

The resultant works extend my longstanding interest in curiosity and voyeurism. I’ve made these images by layering the scratch-off material used for lottery tickets over a series of self-portraits. The medium appeals to our tactile urges while also asking viewers to think about trust, restraint, vulnerability and privacy.

 

Collectors will be able to (quite literally) expose something confidential and highly sensitive.

 

Several years ago I read a quote by Marlene Dumas, who noted that her art “is situated between the pornographic tendency to reveal everything and the erotic inclination to hide what it’s all about.” This tension extends beyond art and into our experience of contemporary society.

 

We live in a confusing moment wherein one’s (typically female) naked body can be weaponized, the stuff of blackmail, shame and worse. Paradoxically, celebrities use nude images as capital on social media or in the glossy pages of the “right” publications.

 

Privacy has been whittled down to practically nothing, and any remaining semblance of it is more or less illusory. I worry about the internet’s permanence, and mostly want to be left out of it. Unfortunately, the clearly sensible inclination to stay withdrawn is often coupled with the very human desire to be seen.

 

It is a thrill to mimic intimacy through imagery. I have never worried about where the pictures I make will end up (whether out of a belief in integrity or a blessed naïveté, I am not sure).

 

But as I get older, I realize the power one relinquishes through sharing imagery. I have been fortunate. Others have not. Hence this series’ reference to the lottery—the unlucky vs the lucky.

 

It is my hope that collectors of these works are content to think of them as an idea rather than as an invitation. Though in truth, I myself often think about the line between viewer and voyeur, and at what point an itch should get scratched.

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