My father died four years ago

1999

In the series Clearing Space I attempt to cancel artists who have been implicated In the Me Too movement. For each photograph I created a graphite sketch by repeatedly crossing out each figure. In the computer I transformed these physical sketches into masks to filter the false facades I built to erase each celebrity. As I made each image I struggled with my simultaneous desire to preserve the work I loved while erasing the artist. The resulting images are empty and yet also haunted by bright shards of color that hang in the air.  The flickering remnants mark both my personal difficulties and the complexity of the task of completely canceling a celebrity within a culture obsessed with seeing and archiving famous bodies. But the empty spaces also hold a hope that the replacements who will step into these auditoriums and screening rooms will be some of the artists that have been traditionally marginalized in these spaces.

All of the images have been created under the Fair Use doctrine of the US copyright law and follow The Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for the Visual Arts created by the College Art Association.