ARTIST STATEMENT
In documenting prophylactic refuse encountered throughout the city, I invite the viewer to engage with these discarded objects through curiosity rather than judgment. My work is intended to spark conversations around the myriad topics this litter elucidates: ecological/environmental concerns; socio-economic challenges such as housing rights; sexual health/wellbeing – especially as contraceptive access and bodily autonomy are being attacked daily. It summons the viewer to grapple with their own feelings – be they of disgust/embarrassment, or perhaps the excitement/thrill – found in reckoning with this rubbish. There can be a surprising beauty and much humor found in examining this dross through new lenses.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Anna Nichol Stutsman (b. 1979, Goshen, Indiana) is a San Francisco based conceptual artist. In 2010 she received an Associates of Applied Science in Welding Technology, with a specialty in Art Metals from Austin Community College, Austin, Texas. In 2015 she received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting from the San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco, California. She has exhibited work in Texas, Tennessee and California; in 2024 she will participate in the Chateau Orquevaux Artist in Residency program, Orquevaux, France. Working from an interdisciplinary practice, she utilizes collage, drawing, painting, photography, printmaking, and sculpture techniques as she seeks to embody the act of questioning.
© Anna Nichol Stutsman