Jeans from an Old Show is a sculpture and performance. The sculpture is made from personal objects recycled into paper: jeans, religious materials, children’s books, clothing, bed sheets of relatives, etc. The memories of the items linger in the fibers, but the uses of the objects and the visual representation that the forms once held have been destroyed. Now void of their original shapes, the objects have become recycled washed out but colored papers with unique textures and various clues to their origins. Sewn together in a map-like formation, they are sutured onto a cloth backing that hangs by strings from the ceiling surrounding the room. Like paint on the walls of an old building, both the imposed flatness of the object and the new depth of the sculpture reveal the palimpsest of time. Two performers, appropriating the identity of “Jenny Seastone” activate the space by telling stories of the re-formed objects and claiming ownership of the narratives. These performances raise questions of authenticity and identity.

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The philosophy of Henri Bergson, which references time and memory, infiltrates the research. Questions on how memory shapes identity, how memory functions linked to time, how time changes narratives and subsequently the identity of an individual, and what it means to own a narrative, are within the work. The writings of philosopher Timothy Morton also comes into play as the piece asks what it means to see an object versus know an object, and what it is to be something and not-something at the same time.

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Exhibited at Uncanny Valley in Williamsburg, Brooklyn in May 2017 for my MFA Thesis.

and at The Invisible Dog's Glass House, in July 2017