ARTIST STATEMENT
In my artistic practice, I am interested in depicting the body, but complicating the viewing plane through techniques of photographic doubling, fragmentation, self-quotation and self-erasing. My images are printed and positioned as life-sized, topographical, and site-specific installations which are then re-framed in new photographs or experienced as sculptural objects and live performances.
My work is an experiment in deconstructing our relationship to beauty and object lust. The images depict glamour and sex appeal, and simultaneously violence and rejection of it. Objects of desire are culled from internet sources and printed beyond their means to create a grotesque collage with the real body. Pixelation, rough edges, and color shifts aim a critical eye at our rampant consumer-driven culture and the empty promises it offers.
In my most recent work, Mirror, domestic scenes depict lush swaths of light, florals, fruit, objects, and fabrics. Here, I imagine a vision of the female body isolated inside the domestic interior, surrounded by facsimiles of desirable goods. Upon closer inspection, the objects and surroundings are flat photographic props collaged on and around the performer’s body. The manipulated body upends perception, creating a slippery sense of reality and digital subjecthood. It is about being looked at and thinking of yourself as something that’s looked at. We are all objects and subjects of a digital gaze. I aim to destabilize the normalness of seeing and being seen as objects in order to provide a more empowering path towards representation.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Trisha Holt is a photographer and performance artist based in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Her work has been presented in New York, Detroit, Seattle, Miami, and Chicago among others. Her work was included in the recent exhibition, With Eyes Opened: Cranbrook Academy of Art, at the Cranbrook Art Museum in June 2021. Her Livestream performances have been screened a part of EXPO Chicago with Bert Green Fine Art and at Emerson Dorsch Gallery in Miami. Holt has been awarded a studio residency at the Vermont Studio Center and a fellowship at the Klara Artist Colony in Olafsfjordur, Iceland.
Holt holds an MFA in Photography from Cranbrook Academy of Art and a BFA in Photography from Arizona State University. Her work is represented by David Klein Gallery in Detroit, MI. Holt is an Assistant Professor at Siena Heights University in Adrian, MI.
© Trisha Holt