Hidden Abodes

This 5-vignette installation contains 10 slip-cast piggy banks portrayed in scenes made from found objects and ready-made materials. The pigs serve as McGuffins, or metaphoric stand-ins for systemic power and domination.  The works are playful yet violent, and hold tensional contradictions in concept and form to  consider the systematic and terrific horors capitalism produces.

For example, Innovation Eats the Bacon explores the innovation cycle and the often cannibalistic nature of capitalism as framed by Nancy Fraser. Prepositions on Foreground and Background explores her formulation of background and foreground conditions for capitalism – how un-commodified appropriation and extraction props up commodified exploitation and alienation. Other vignettes address the absurdity of competition, polarizing incentive structures, and shifting boundaries of exploitation, among other economic themes that examine contradictory experiences under capitalism.


Did you choose the rules?
Dimensions variable
Ceramic, nails, pleather, pillow, sticks, plastic, fabric, rope
2022

Prepositions on foreground and background
35” x 21” x 35”
Ceramic, mirror, rug, mini broom
2022

Hi there Capitalist Realism
75” x 70” x 30“
Ceramic, sheet metal, pie cutter, slip, matches, “in case of fire” hammer, rubber, lemon, lemon squeezer, shredded employment contracts, corner measurement device, binky, cardboard, cinder block
2022

Boundaries function if…
Ceramic, plastic, glitter stars (50 large, 5 medium, 574 small), baseball
2022

Innovation eats the bacon
8” x 24” x 36”
Ceramic, astroturf, wood picket fence, light bulb and lighting components
2022