Dispossessed

Dispossessed was an instillation that was organized around two plays,  Parts of Parts & Stitches by Riti Sachdeva and The Circuz by Georgina Hernandez Escobar.. In Elizabeths Sandlin Dwyer, the art directors words "the two plays share a common ground in that they both present the audience with a city broken down by borders, violence and chaos. The people in these two plays find themselves in realms of dispossession, isolation and desperation." 

I'm really beginning to  enjoy working with stage sets and short term installations. It has forced me to work outside of my usual realm of materials. The idea seems to keep coming back to light weight, cheep, and possibly the farthest departure to how I'm used to working; not absolutely durable. For the instillation I made a larger-than-life-size marionette. When I was first introduced to the project and heard that one of the plays was about the circus I immediately had ideas of a marionette. As it turns out the idea of a marionette lent itself to the second play Parts of Parts and Stitches, about the India/Pakistan independence. So much so that by the time the marionette was finished it resembled the iconography of that play possibly more than that of Circuz. 

The marionette itself was a great thing to work with and I plan on doing more work with this idea soon. You can see in the video on my Projects and Collaborations page, it wasn't as easy to use as a small handheld marionette is. But because of it's size, seeing it moving around in a room with people milling around was something I look forward to exploring more.