Nanette Wylde

Working Class
performative text
8 x 10 in.

Thoughts regarding Assumptions and the making of this work:

I am thinking about my/our (sometimes/often) unquestioning willingness to assume we know what someone is about. Often because of their visual appearance and presence, including the way an individual moves through space, carries themselves, dresses and talks. I am thinking about our readiness to judge, our eagerness to typecast. I am thinking about the preponderance of need to feel that one “knows.” This exemplified by the presumption of knowing and being able to predict the all of a somebody when given a small amount of information.

I am thinking about labeling and the language we use to think about each other and ourselves.

I am thinking about how assumptions are often based on fragments of interaction, and how they often become the portrait that we hold as being the reality of an individual.

I am also thinking about the contrast between assuming and experiencing, that is, discovering that an individual’s being does not fit with the assumption or stereotype of her physical image/presence or the label we might have assigned.

© Nanette Wylde