My Secret, 2010
Note cards, miniature manila envelopes, Lace gift bags, decorative pen, fish bowl, folding table stand, desk, and chair. Dimensions variable.
Created at, and presented during The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts “Studio Residency for New York City Arts Workers”, New York City.
Project Description:
This is a simple interactive artwork where people are welcomed to write down a sexual secret on a small folding card, (resembling a mass produced gift card), put it in a small manilla envelope, and deposit it into an empty fish bowl. At intervals the secrets are pulled from the bowl and placed in miniature lace giftbags, where they are displayed on a small folding table stand. These can be opened and read by visitors, who then put them back for the next viewer to encounter.
The structure of display is intended to suggest that these shared secrets are like beautiful little gifts, thus diffusing lurid or unsettling qualities in the massage and encouraging the reader to focus on the humanity of the truth revealed.