Brooklyn Streetworks 2006

The Brooklyn Streetworks were exhibited at the Pearl Street Gallery (Brooklyn) in a show titled Street/PaperWorks, (May 9, 20 - 29, 2005), which was a two-person exhibition with papermaker Mary Sullivan. The pieces were later installed in various sites around the DUMBO area of Brooklyn on January 29, 2006. The Streetworks reference to the tragedy in Iraq where materials and objects found in the streets seemed to carry their own meanings-metal shutters hinted at surveillance and a yearning over a faded cardboard pin-up from the 50s that spoke to the myth of simpler times, while an actual violin inserted into the back of Man Ray's wry commentary on a 19thC Ingres portrait marks a forlorn quest for evidence of an objective reality and an intolerance for irony. And what is uniform and rigid in a war game sense has mere archaeological appeal when seen as a specimen or a trophy.

The Brooklyn Streetwork installation included Memory Trace III, which was a series that consisted of three small timber boxes and each held an icon, an emblem, a relic, which carried traces of what was once a part or a place related to Brooklyn -a rusted engine part, a fragment of heavy duty canvas, a household mousetrap with the name 'victor(y)' stamped on it. Shielding these objects, printed on layers of plexiglass, were the names and details of young soldiers from Brooklyn killed in Iraq…"The DOD (Department of Defense) identifies army casualties…No. 1096-04…No 845-03 … No.…1236-04…" Memory Trace II was sent to an exhibition in Spain along with a series of postcards asking for responses to the Iraq war to be forwarded for use in a follow-up streetwork. The third piece, Memory Trace I, was kept and used in a performance piece titled Art is Me, Art is You, held in New York, May 28, 2006.

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