(Re)Evolving Door

(Re)Evolving Door (installation detail)

Female roles are becoming less clearly defined and increasingly more complicated. Often we are called on to erase ourselves, what our mothers and grandmothers taught us, and recreate ourselves daily. Work a full day, come home, take classes, take care of the family, your husband, yourself, and all the while looking, feeling and being sexy, strong, and focused. Are our hands perpetually tied by all of these expectations? This process can be draining and somehow refreshing and exciting. Do the same ties that bind us also provide a way to hang on? With this recent body of work I attempt to expose the complicated process of how we see ourselves within this contemporary framework.
This series is ongoing and some pieces are interactive. These drawings can be touched, moved, and removed during the duration of installation in order to gain better access to other drawings on the wall and create conflicting shadows. Recurrent in my recent work are figurative elements of women, flowers, and landscape elements that serve as surrogates, which tell the story of both my own experiences and the every woman. The lack of detail and color provides the viewer with almost endless possibilities for connections they make with the image and its movements and shadows. Beginning with the tradition of drawing the figure, I acknowledge the body and my own humanity. I let the drawings sit in my studio till the pose speaks to me, then I “strip” the drawing of everything except it’s shell or contour line. By omitting so much of the detail, the real work of describing my identity formation can begin. Moving and repeating the prototype drawing creates a sojourn inward, tapping into memories of memories, how I’m feeling in the moment, and future expectations. The options are endless and just like the way I imagine or see myself, the drawing is a process in flux.

Relative

Relative (installation detail)

Relative (installation detail)

"Angels" Porcelain angels, marble mortar & pestle, 5 x 7 x 4.5 inches, 2009

One angel conveniently turns her back towards her crushed sister, demurely playing the expected role to the same forces that could destroy her too.

"Save Me" Endless loop video, 2009

Video of a woman repeatedly baptizing herself in the River Jordan. Her halo appears when she emerges from the water and fades as she rises, so she must take another dip. Shot at The Jordan River in Israel, the river in which Jesus was baptized.

Part Sisyphus, part Pollyanna, she willingly, self-righteously and deliriously believes that she can be pure of body and mind, regardless of the fact that this is humanly impossible, and more importantly, impractical. This dream becomes her prison in that she cannot allow herself to enjoy the pleasures and realities of life, including the natural process of making mistakes, growing wiser as a result and laughing at them fondly in hindsight. Who/what does she really need to be saved from?

See a video clip at www.kanderson.tv/SaveMe.html

LAN Party or “National Take Your Daughter to Work Day

In LAN Party or “National Take Your Daughter to Work Day” Noelle Mason grafts autobiographical narrative onto appropriated images, objects, and contexts in an attempt to negotiate the complexities of power, which reverberate between the interpersonal and institutional.  The resulting installation, or local area network (LAN,) implicates the viewer in an act of violence and uses the gallery as a medium to examine the historical precedence that affirms the authority of viewership.  In LAN Party a Remington M700 police sniper rifle is poised atop a domestic looking table.  A stool and headphone set invite the viewer to position herself behind the rifle, aimed at a small ornately framed monitor across the room.  The monitor which, can only be seen and heard when standing in close proximity, shows found footage taken through the lens of an American helicopter sniper as he targets and kills Iraqis on the ground.  The video is accompanied by a telephone recording of Ms. Mason’s father’s voice coolly describing the formal qualities of his own experience with the Remington M700 (weight, material, kickback.)  Outfitted with headphones and enabled by the magnifying powers of the rifle’s scope, the viewer across the room receives the sniper footage in concert with the original soundtrack—the voices of gunmen and the booming sound of shots being fired.

People often identify the Earth as being feminine, in idea or sometimes in literal “flesh”. Take for example, the famous Gaia, or the many stories, such as the Hellenic origin myths, of the Earth represented literally or figuratively as a female goddess. What does it mean to identify the planet on which we live with a particular gender? How should we take this today, when the “body” of the Earth is plowed, mined, and otherwise despoiled? Is gender a factor in how we treat the Earth?

A glittering peak of  quartz crystals, are mounted, in a sexually suggestive way, by a painstakingly sculpted tiny female figure. Whether this piece represents an “Earth Goddess” bonding with the Earth, a cheeky poke at an outdated stereotype, a woman gyrating on a feminized phallic symbol, or a third-wave re-embrasure of ‘feminine’ ideals, remains up to the viewer to decide.

This piece will be included in the upcoming show RE:figure at Columbia College’s Glass Curtain Gallery, in which LY artists Stacia Yeapanis and Amber Hawk Swanson will also be participating.

More of my work can be seen at jennykendler.com

Detail of ‘Childhood ‘memory station’ in Secret Museum of Mankind Installation

This piece was part of the installation Secret Museum Of Mankind where I created my own Natural History Museum, which included different ‘memory stations’: that represented my genetic past, childhood and future.

(Below) This mural is based off a original photograph obtained by my father during his service in the Bolivian Army in 1967. The characters in the piece are Che Guevara and his gang in the Bolivian jungles during their attempt to revolutionilize Bolivia. I used my father’s clothing and towels as materials.

Donna Huanca, Cuban Rebels, 1967 (Last Supper) 2007, 9’ x 12' Father’s Clothing on Canvas, Faux Cocaine

The Future Diorama was composed of all of the galleries pedestals and natural elements such as plants, dirt, bones, toilet paper.

Once Upon is an installation that contemporizes fairy tales and myths. Its purpose is to ask the question, do we still believe in the mythical ideal woman? Is she a damsel in distress? A mythical creature? A witch? Is her purpose pleasing her husband and bearing children?  The sculptures of women I created represent individual heroines in fairy tales. Each women is created with ceramic, wood, bronze or iron parts and wears an embroidered dress. In the installation these sculptures are placed in groups where they create an interaction between one another. To enhance the interaction between these women I installed sound that contained commands from every fairy tale I referenced. Each command I created derives a single message from each Fairy tale referenced in the installation.

Save me.- Rumpelstilskin

Be Afraid of me.- Little Miss Muffet

Satisfy me.- Daphne

Give me your hair.- Rapunsel

Eat this.- Snow White

Make her love me.- Atlanta

Consume me.- Hansel and Grettel

Cut this.- The Fates

Leave me.- The Three Bears

Love me.- Athena

Protect me.- Jourinda and Jourinde

Fear me.- Little Red Riding Hood

Look at me.- The Graece

Obey me.- Cinderella

Below is a link to the sound piece.

http://www.soundsnap.com/audio/pending/280367

My performances, videos and sculptures create a world populated by a masked and costumed cast that re-interprets my own image in the form of popular cultural icons.  My characters struggle with each other and the audience through activities that combine violence and overt sexuality with slapstick physical humor.  I embody an ever-changing cast that includes such personas as a Fairy Princess, the Blushing Bride, and Beauty and The Beast.  With the help of these characters, I create scenarios that simultaneously exist in the realms of physical comedy and the unknown. In The Birthday Girl, I perform an endurance piece that uses a hyper-feminine, Rococo aesthetic. It plays with sexual and decorative “excess” through the consumption of birthday cupcakes.  The second one, Boxing for Mr. Wonderful, is a piece that I created and directed, with other actors playing the key roles.  I worked with a fight choreographer to create this piece, and rehearsed and performed it at Gleason’s Gym in Brooklyn.  The piece comments on the American obsession with the excessiveness of “Bridezillas” and their role in society.  The third piece, The Beastly Beauty, was performed as a work in progress at Participantinc. Gallery in NYC.   It uses a Baroque aesthetic in a battle scene that combines dance with slapstick physical humor.  The final piece involves more elaborate costumes that morph from one form to another, and will be performed through a grant from the Brooklyn Arts Council this July in Coney Island.

AWICHA YARTIRI (Grandmother as Healer), 2009 18' x 10' x 18'

‘AWICHA YARTIRI’ is a proposal for an on-site installation which highlights the parallels of Bolivian and Korean culture, which still respects indigenous traditions in a contemporary climate.

‘AWICHA YARTIRI’ layers images, colors and objects derived from my personal mythology and genetic memory against architectural models and objects appropriated from traditional Korean Mudang (shaman) Gut (ritual) “Spirit Rooms”.

Iconic images are molded from fabric using my grandmothers, my mothers and my clothing as well as anyonomous used women’s clothing from area, which will help sculpt the installation. With this gesture, the DNA of many women will be woven together as an image, solidifying the synergy of the piece both conceptually and aesthetically.

PACHAMAMA, 2008 (video still) performance at Marin Headlands

The installation will serve as a stage for a performance where I will appropriate a healing ritual inspired by stories of my grandmother who was a Quechuan YARTIRI (spiritual healer) from Potosi, Bolivia.
With this piece, I am considering Carl Jung’s Genetic (or racial memory) theory, which by definition is a “memory present at birth that exists in the absence of sensory experience, and is incorporated into the genome over long spans of time.”
Since properties of a“ YARTIRI” is believed to be an inherited intuition, (as is the role of some Mudangs) the performance accepts the potential of inherited memory and healing through ritual.
The Installation is dedicated to the comfort women of World War II who like to be referred to as Halmonie (Grandmothers).

Born in Chicago, Huanca received BFA in Painting from the University of Houston in 2004 and received the DeGolyer Grant from the Dallas Museum of Art the same year. She has been invited to residencies at Skowhegan School of painting and sculpture, Skowhegan, Maine, Lawndale Art Center, Houston, Texas, L’ecole du Baoum, Grenoble, France, Workspace Residency at Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, New York City, Art OMI International in Ghent, New York and Headlands Center for The Arts, San Francisco, California.   Upcoming projects include GOON SQUAD: remake of Biba Boutique (collaboration with MILHK design and Marcella Faustini) at Ping Pong Gallery in San Francisco and a year-long residency as guest student at the Städelschule in Frankfurt, Germany.
Huanca’a line of wearable sculptures have been traveling, profiled and sold with Andrea Zittel’s Smockshop, currently on view at Tanja Pol Galerie in Munich, Germany.

still 1 from Haircut video

Hair Project

Hair is a performance project of video and photo installation. The haircut reflects the assimilation of individual identity into that of the marriage.

View Haircut video here
The juxtaposed videos show myself having a long shoulder length hair cut down to the same length of hair as my husband’s

still 2 from Haircut video

still 3 from Haircut video

Haircut, 2007, video, 3min 33sec

photographs of getting haircuts and hair from Yoon Cho and her husband in the shadow boxes

Hair in the box, ©2007, 11 3/4″ x 14 3/4″ x 2 7/8″ (for each panel)

Go Get 'Em

Using a cactus and a high heel shoe that is covered and painted again to look like itself, Go Get ‘Em creates an abrupt visual scenario through the collision of the emblematic ‘pump’ and the thorny, uprooted cactus.

Blow Away Stowaways (installation view)

Two actual household fans are ‘covered’ with cardboard, tape, and molding paste and painted again to look like themselves. As each fan blows a tumbleweed towards the other, Blow Away Stowaways, creates a humorous visual representation, using an iconic thistle that is indigenous to Russia, of futile attempts to control and understand nature and our environment.

You Are An Excellent (AND LUCKY!) Woman

This ’still-life’ arrangement includes an actual ‘O’ self-help magazine, which is painted over in shades of beige, a painted representation of a one dollar bill, and pieces of a broken mirror. The set up represents a scenario that includes sources of comfort and security in combination with seven years of  ’bad luck.’