Processes as Objects
My printmaking practice explores the “objectness”[1] of stones, pebbles, and cobbles. Informed by Heiddegerian Object Oriented Ontology, my work expands how we define objects. It presents them as things with histories, “irreducible in both directions: an object is more than its pieces and less than its effects.”[2] In the series Souls and Eclipse I complicate and question the boundaries of objects. Using photograms, a photographic process that results in a loss of visual information, the objects in my series are presented in unusual ways that work to defamiliarize viewers and invite them to focus on the unknown or overlooked qualities and aspects of the object.
In the series Souls, I display stones in a way that reinforces their “objectness” by hinting at an inner depth – the photogram technique seemingly removes their surface, which gives viewers the illusion of looking inside them. The visual uncertainties caused by tonal differences question the objects’ material qualities and boundaries. In the Eclipse series, I visualize how an event can also be seen as an object through employing “flat” imaging techniques. Again, using the photogram technique, which allows me to render a four-dimensional event into a two-dimensional image, I am able to hint at the eidetic properties of objects. Such events cannot be directly recorded in Souls, but the shapes in both series are still similar, highlighting that the holes, surfaces and connections we see are not mere topography – they are the marks of events in the objects’ (hi)stories.