For Martha, 2007
performance/installation/video

This project is a contemporary homage to Martha Rosler's Semiotics of the Kitchen, which humorously deconstructed the vocabulary of domesticity in the 1970's. For Martha utilizes the deconstruction methods that Rosler employed to critically analyze the semiotics of femininity that are awkwardly constructed and transmitted in Jr. High and High School sex education classes. For Martha further addresses the uncomfortable socially constructed environments where developing pre-teenage girls develop concepts of their identities as females. The installation consists of a girls locker room, entered through a hallway of lockers lit by a red florescent light, each locker omitting generic teenage gossip whispers of a different nature (i.e.- “I heard she is pregnant,” “My friend told me she made out with 6 different guys under the bleachers Friday night- what a slut!”). The hallway enters into a cotton candy scented room filled with panties, where viewers may sit on a locker room bench and view a Martha Rosler style informational sex ed video delivered by a stoic asexual gym teacher.