Puppetry and Kinetic Sculpture
In the summer of 2022, I spent two months in Messejana, a small town in the Portuguese interior. During my time there, I created work that acknowledged my outsider status, and re-examined quotidian elements of the community through that outsider lens.
I created a fantastical installation that included the ceramic roof tiles ubiquitous in the area. I built rolling hills and covered them with small cardboard replicas of standard Portuguese house models. The houses trailed up the walls and over the ceiling of the gallery, further expanding the surreal quality of the exhibition. Presiding over everything was a pair of windmills, another common sight on the rural horizon.
Part of Beyond Repetition, a group exhibition with Buinho residents Phil Jones, Gisel Carriconde A, Gretchen Hasse, and Makiko Harris. Messejana, Alentejo, Portugal, August 2022.