Gwynneth VanLaven
Tomato (2020)
inkjet photography with embedded text
12 x 18 in.
$280
As people venture from home, I know “Stay at Home” orders do not end at the stroke of a legislative pen. My body demands a different timeline for quarantine. The social contract was never, apparently. In privilege, I missed the memo for all vulnerable people, whose voices and votes are suppressed, the marginalized, the murdered, the “dispensable.”
In my work I often blur humor with serious things. There is no lack of humor poking at the current political sphere. The humor I hold, though, is a lightness of seeing, of holding human life gently. I’m trying to breathe without spreading viral droplets of hate. That unmasked, unbridled pandemic of avarice and ego allows deaths to pass unnoticed and allowing to be met with indifference.
My works aim to anchor from the inside out. In this particular case, I end up looking for specificity of living with intersections of living in a disabled body, low-income and with food challenges. It is both privileged and it is a tough (sur)reality to face, we find the back doors but they all open to home.
© Gwynneth VanLaven