Phase IV: Pouches are sewn shut into time capsules to be opened in year 2100 by an artist who has not yet been born.
Phase III: All 500 pouches have been inverted and filled with letters to a new generation.
Phase II: People begin to insert letters to a new generation into the money bags. As they do, they turn the bag inside out to reveal a colorful inner lining made of fabric from countries across the world. Slowly, the room turns from all bland to all color.
Phase I: The walls are lined with 500 bland, uniformly produced money bags. They hang from blank, noose-like price tags.
ARTIST STATEMENT
At this current point in U.S. history, Donald Trump is far more famous to the average American than Greg Mortenson, a man who has spent the last 17 years establishing over 90 schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan so that young women have access to education. This seems to indicate that pop culture is prioritizing monetary rewards over humanitartian efforts. In this social climate, I wonder if our ability to appreciate beauty has deteriorated in the wake of our desire for traditional wealth. This installation reflects my interest in how the products we consume affect our experience of living within it. In an extreme case scenario, what would our lives look like if we measured the worth of every act and object exclusively on margins of profit? In another hypothetical scenario, what would our society look like if we designated the value of our products based exclusively on the degree to which they increased the quality of our lives?This time-based, participatory installation is the inverse of a quick fix, an alternative to reality t.v., and the worst case of mass production possible. The work starts with rows of empty, interchangeable pouches made from ordinary fabric; stand-ins for the corporate-owned songs that play over and over again on the radio, the clothing that sits on the clearance racks at Walmart, and the 2.5 million cups of coffee served through a Dunkin Donuts take-out window in the United States every day. Throughout the course of a week, visitors are invited to write letters to a future generation. Each letter is then inserted into an individually adorned, colorful vessel. Slowly, the space turns from all beige to fully colorful as the room fills with private offerings of wisdom, humor, advice, and reflection. The pouches, each sewn shut, become time capsules--significantly selfless gifts for a generation of people we will never meet. For a brief window of time, I hope to create a space that allows us to collectively imagine and appreciate something bigger and more important than our immediate selves.
