ARTS PORTFOLIO
INSTALLATIONS with PROJECTIONS
THE PRESENT
This work is based on an audio interview with a 16-year-old Hispanic single mother from the Los Angeles area. The interview is combined with projected images that reflect basic needs for food and shelter.
The projected text is drawn from talk radio and echoes preconceptions about welfare recipients and stereotyping in general.
The three elements of image, text and audio interview form an interaction that confirms, refutes or denies the reality of any one element at any given point.
ART & CONSCIENCE: IMAGES FROM THE URBAN REALITY
“South African born artist Sherwin Mark is an expert in discerning the myths and rationalizations devised to maintain the privileges of one sector of a society at the expense of other's. A recording of a child's plaintive voice dominated his three-minute multimedia presentation. As the child relates her history of abuse and abandonment - her parents broke her arm and legs when she was two months; at 5 she was raped by her brother - projected texts and images meditate on society’s responses to her situation, judging her a “loser”, a”damn whore”, a ‘lazy bitch’” The voice drones on with a matter-of-factness, unaware that life might offer anything else.”
Alice Thorson - Washington City Paper