The Name Of A Self Is Poverty, 2016

This series was called “The Name of A Self Is Poverty” (2016), which is a line from the poet Alice Notley. The project consisted of a series of large, irregularly-shaped structures wrapped in muslin that all were in a state of leaning or relationship (to the wall or to each other). I wanted to make heavy, dependent, “poor” “bodies” which at times even echoed the shapes of the alphabet. I was inspired by many texts for this project, one of which was Maggie Nelson’s essay, “The Art of Leaning,” in which she describes a relationship of influence between artists and writers that isn’t competitive and conflictual as the Bloomian paradigm in “The Anxiety of Influence” suggests, but rather is one of sharing and generosity. I wanted to convey this sense of the subject as living a state of fragility and relationship; in being we are “inter-being,” to use a term from Thích Nhất Hạnh. Sometimes the structures were minimally painted with gesso, marked with chalk lines or stained with graphite. I also used lines from Virginia Woolf’s “On Being Ill,” and Luce Irigaray’s “The Sex That Is Not One” as titles.