stranger's eye, intimate text

2013

In this project, I wanted to examine the creative process itself: silence versus expression, and the tension between the hoped-for intimacy of artistic connection and the public nature of art display. I had just come out of 5 years of a self-imposed creative silence as a writer, and wanted to understand the impulse behind self-silencing, as well as find a new artistic faith to sustain my work going forward. Using text from diaries, conversations and artist statements, I created confessional installations of handwritten notes on tracing paper, and shot a series of street photography documenting couples engaged in intimate moments in public spaces around New York City.

This work celebrates both the search and the answer, the fragility yet existence of connection; it posits the artist’s relationship to the viewer as no less charged than those of lovers. In this vision, language and bodies become interchangeable signs of desire and meeting, as the pressure and conceptual structure of ‘the public eye’ is pierced by quiet, ephemeral moments of private illumination.