Michaela Pilar Brown
About:
My practice explores the body through the prisms of age, gender, race, sexuality and history. I consider memory, myth, ritual, desire and the spaces the body occupies within these vignettes. The narratives move between past, present and surreal projections of the future, sometimes occupying these spaces simultaneously.
Cock Fight, 2015.
I explore the ritualized use of common objects, and architectural spaces, often queering their size, orientation or form to blur the line between memory, dream and experience, plotting the relationship between normative considerations of the body and its function in specified spaces. I use racially identified signifiers to twist and turn mythologies about the body and the spaces that it occupies. The work is at once confrontational and seductive. Graphic novels, pugilist sport, colonial portraiture and magic realism factor into the narratives.
The Dance, 2015.
Recent work explores home as a physical structure and repository for memories. I chronicle beginnings, departures and returns to this symbolic yet physical place, believing it to be the genesis where history, memory and myth are joined. The characters and the spaces I build for them to inhabit demonstrate the capacity in our lives for monsters, angels, heroes and giants, illustrating our reactions to occupation and absence, desire, responsibility, and obligation. (text website artist)
Jester, 2015.