Works in Progress: By Misha Capecchi: Caliper, Day 1-22

Day 7

Day 10

Experiments in Reflection:

This statement is in reference to the work posted in June 2010.

This body of work seeks to revisit the history of eugenics and to examine the artifacts of its theories that affect contemporary ways of thinking about human genetics, individual potential, and racism. I am interested in looking at this point in history (1900-1940s) where science, acting as an absolute truth, was exposed as merely a human construct; a product of culture.

I attempt to objectively revisit this period and its contemporary remnants. I conduct my own experiments, reconstructing the eugenicist’s tools and photographic documents out of comforting materials: cheese, chocolate, bread and fabric. I then allow the nature of the materials and its exposure to the environment to direct the final outcome of the piece. The cheese and the bread with exposure to elements in the atmosphere slowly decompose over time. The chocolate, though in a stable state now has the potential to melt with exposure to heat. The fabric, due to the nature of the material, and its inability to translate detail, creates an object that is abstracted and removed from reality.

The work is small, and therefore begs a concentrated interaction with the viewer. The work is not meant to repulse, it instead is meant allow for quite reflection on society’s capacity to normalize brutality and inexcusable ignorance. More specifically the work seeks to examine the potential that every individual has to play both the victim and the predator.

Works in Progress: By Misha Capecchi

Friday, June 25, 2010

Caliper, Day 1-22

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