“We Believe in the Sum of Ourselves” is made up of 9 panels that I began in April 2020.
My working process on the panels, however, has been analogous to creating a sculpture rather than making a painting. Each panel is framed individually; they hang together as a unit, isolated and contained.
The red stitching was done, usually in the mornings, and references the novel coronavirus image created by 2 artists/medical illustrators at the CDC (you know it doesn’t really look like that right?)
It’s obvious to me that this is about the virus. I imagine the red marks marching into and out of our homes--- infecting, sitting, resting, and unknowingly spreading. We are the virus and the virus is us.
The first 2 panels completed for “We Believe in the Sum of Ourselves” are obviously mazes (in the beginning of quarantine, we binge watched WestWorld-the maze is a big deal there). It felt as if we all were in a maze in April, trying to figure out how to navigate the threatening new world; each time I went to a store (hello! arrows on the floor) and then came home, I’d retrace my steps and wipe surfaces- going in the same way as I went out.
The panels were made during the height of my own panic and feelings of isolation- fears that my friends and/or family would become sick and die alone and that I wouldn’t be able to see them again; different expressions of isolation.
Who could infect us? Who might we infect?
Sometimes when I was working on the panels in “We Believe in the Sum of Ourselves“, I thought about the brief encounters in and out of our home, the Fedex guy, the mail woman, my neighbor, my closest friend. What if I was responsible for passing on the virus?
This work refers to my efforts to keep the virus out of our home and feelings of futility and frustration in those efforts.
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