Excerpt
from the article published in DenverPost.com, June 25, 2006
Art of the State
Selection of Colorado's "most influential" reflects a
singular vision - and some blind spots
By Kyle MacMillan
Denver Post Fine Arts Critic
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CUTTING
EDGE | Few works in "Decades of Influence" are more
innovative than "The Hundred Headless Women" (2001-06),
a wall installation by Pamela Joseph of Aspen. The piece consists
of dozens of used cutting boards adorned with wood-burned
facsimiles of vintage images of magic acts. (Museum of Contemporary
Art/Denver)
full
article: click
here |
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Artist
Statement - Pamela Joseph 2006 | The
Hundred Headless Women, is a wall installation of wood burned
kitchen cutting boards, which was originally created in 2001 for
The Torture Museum in my traveling interactive exhibition,
The Sideshow of the Absurd. New wood burned drawings have
continued to the present. The name pays homage to Max Ernst’s
brilliant novel of collages and engravings, The Hundred Headless
Woman.
In general, each cutting board is burned with a drawing of women
in perilous situations, recalling the invincible and sexy magician’s
assistant who is sawn in half, turned into an animal and back, or
stabbed with a knife. The heroine is always smiling, and she always
survives.
In 1998, researching carnivals and sideshows, I discovered one special
illusion that helped spark the concept: The Headless Woman
magic trick. About the same time, I read an article in the New York
Times titled, The Full Body Transplant. It reported that
the head of one monkey was connected by tubes and sutures to the
trunk of another monkey and showed unmistakable signs of consciousness.
I began to question a society of empty heads detached from reality;
a culture that emphasizes beauty and youth, and avoids the truth.
I remembered phrases such as “You have to suffer to be beautiful”
and “As long as you’re pretty, you don’t have
to be smart.”
When I began the series, I naively believed in the power of women
to overcome the perils they might encounter. But as my awareness
evolved concerning the denigrated level of women in the world, their
mutilation, their suicides and deaths caused by a repressive society,
my work took on an inevitably darker tone.
The Institute for Electronic Art at Alfred University and Ma Nose
Studios, Aspen, Colorado are jointly publishing a limited hand made
edition of the images. The book is dedicated to all the women throughout
the world whose lowly status, appalling circumstances and hardships
are a source of pain and inspiration to the artist. |
| Exhibited |
Decades
of Influence: Colorado 1985 - Present, a retrospective of
contemporary Colorado artists
The
MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART | DENVER
in partnership with the Metropolitan State College of Denver's
Center for Visual Art
June 16 - August 27, 2006
seventy-two artists at four sites across Denver
Artist's statement & excerpt from
the Denver Post review June 25, 2006
press release & info: click
here | more information: www.mcartdenver.org |
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Finding
Balance | Reconciling the Masculine/Feminine in Contemporary
Art and Culture
to
visit the web site: click
here
Houston Center for Contemporary Craft,
Houston, Texas
October 13, 2006 - January 14, 2007
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