Mackenzie Sikora

Alpha Uterus
acrylic on board
38.5 x 69 in.

My work analyzes the range of strategies between where language begins to break apart and where it holds onto its meaning, disassembling the structures that control our interpretation of language. I seek to understand the role that a viewer plays in the meaning of language.

Words have collective and personal meaning. My paintings open up the gap between the two, between the conventional gendered power structure and individual experience. By layering these opposed meanings, the work reveals the complexity of language and memory.

I distill language to its most formal elements by breaking down sentence to word, word to letter, and letter to shape. By dismantling language and turning it into forms of space and color, I am able to transpose it to object and access its fundamental architecture.

This distillation process allows me to momentarily remove meaning from language, transforming language into a rhythm of abstract pattern and color. I am not severing meaning from language but delaying its most common interpretation. Only upon further observation, does meaning get reassigned through active viewership.

© Mackenzie Sikora