Maggie Day
My work explores the complexities of identity by conflating the line between triumph and failure in relation to social and cultural expectations. Through observations in my role as a mother, as a woman, and as an artist, I have become explicitly aware of many hidden structures and embedded conventions that affect the way in which people interact within various communities. Through my use of material and surface treatments, I point to the tension between the artificial and the real to further complicate the idea of self. My investigation of artificial identity is explored through ceramics, glass, and very specifically chosen objects. The properties and processes associated with these materials are fundamental to the communication of my ideas. When creating my bodily ceramic forms, the process is quick, impulsive, and intentionally rushed to the point that the clay begins to lean and bend with the weight of itself. Once it begins to bend, fall, and “fail,” I build it back up again, forming towers and pits showing triumph in failure. This process creates a form, a trophy of failure, which shows in physical form the feelings of the push and pull of the internal and external forces of societal expectations. In conjunction with these clay bodies, I incorporate glass elements to represent the rigidity and fragility present in all of these systems. I also use glass as a way of presentation, similar to ancient societies artifacts taken out of context and put in glass boxes in museums. Through the relationship of these ceramic bodies in combination of glass and object, I am presenting information about a time and place but also pointing to the artificial in that presentation. With the items I choose, I am able to censor information or curate the way that it is perceived. I am giving examples of preciousness, worth, doting, and love, but also within an artificial staged environment with limited information. These stressed connections of objects within the rigidity and fragility of the glass places a tense stress in the environment that lacks comfort. In our performances of personal presentation we can remove all of the notations of failure but the presence of those failures can lead to connection and relief from the perfectionism of societal roles. Through my material and process, I can have larger conversations about the ideas that are encapsulated in and surrounding my ceramic form about our roles in the world.
