Situated Becomings

This exhibition features my current body of work, the Situated Becomings series (2017-present) and the Poly-morphosis animated video (2019). These works began from asking myself a question: How can collage, intersecting with fiction and feminism, contribute to a posthuman understanding of gender? In her text, A Cyborg Manifesto (1985), feminist scholar Donna Haraway suggests the cyborg, a collage of biology and technology, as a means to urge feminists to move beyond the limitations of traditional gender and embrace a politics of affinity. The collage is based on a character, Mear, developed in my private experimental science fiction writing. With the text guiding the collages, the work addresses the intersection of gender, transformation, and technology by foregrounding Mear’s ability to shift and combine genders through technology. These works range in size from 8 x 10 inches to 30 x 30 inches and are built from my own photographic work, appropriated imagery and occasionally handwritten text from my science fiction writing.

The Situated Becomings series is funded in part by a CLA Dean’s Research grant and a Joseph P. Healey Research grant from the University of Massachusetts, Boston.