Artist: Ann Hamilton

Ann Hamilton’s art is primarily expressed through installation exhibits. Her preferred media is textiles, or things that have similar qualities to textiles, such as line and text. Her reason for this speaks directly to her purpose for her art, she identifies the threads which make up the textile as a metaphoric representation of society. Even though each thread is combined with others to make a new object, cloth, it is still recognizable as an individual thread.

 To explore her ideas of individuals connecting she has done such things as using magenta graduals falling along the surface of a wall to represent America’s bloody and secret heritage. Then the walls had highpoints made from plaster to ketch the granules as they fell. Once fully realized the two created words to a poem that related to her theme. throughout the installation, President Lincoln’s second inaugural speech played over speakers.

In another exhibit, she created to rooms an open industrial building, using large panels of shear cloth. Then images where projected on the two panels, one depicting writing, the other reading. The building was left dark, save for the projectors, and viewers were invited to walk amongst the walls and images.

For this last one she used the building of a failed textile plant near her house. I was particularly interested in this idea because of my own endeavors to find a space that I can repurpose for my art, and make available to others to do the same.