2013
This clothing dresser (fabricated in American Cherrywood by the Virginia-based Webb Furniture company) symbolizes the wheelhouses, obsessions, intersections, and lineages that operate within me. I also view this particular object as an archive - a means to interrogate and engage with the burdens of “heritage” determining what should be protected, discarded, re-imagined, or reconnected.
For approximately an hour, I pushed the dresser (filled with my personal mementos some of which include unfinished works, my hair, wood grain, favorite books, the American flag, magazines, family photos, dehydrated plantain leaves, effigies, and various other materials) from the gallery, down a narrow hallway to a larger performance area and proceeded to interact and interrogate the materials within the drawers. At times, I stroked the dresser, kissed it, tried to stuff myself inside of it, wrote on it, made erasures, all while periodically singing the hook from the song 'Linger' by Irish band, The Cranberries. As a stand-alone, visitors to the gallery are encouraged to observe and handle all of the items in the dresser and to record their responses onto its surface. Performed on January 24, 2013 at Medicine Wheel in Boston. All photos by Lee Thurston.
