Michelle Lisa Herman
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Let's Talk Art
2020
Book
Untitled (Haunted Fish Tank) (video)
2019
Digital Video
Installation in Progress “Untitled (The Treachery of Images or Vision Works)” (video)
2019
Installation
Untitled (Click, Breathe) (video)
2019
Mixed media installation (found object, video, audio)
Dimensions variable
Statement
As humans, we are inherently limited, but we continually strive to run against these restrictions. My current work focuses on limitations of human ability and the ways in which we construct devices—often using technology or other proxies—to extend our limits: particularly the limits of perception, attention, connection, and categorization. Through installations, sculptures, and video, I explore how we negotiate and push these boundaries every day.
One device we use to extend our limitations is language. Within this system of signification, there is an inherent “slipperiness” in which meaning becomes malleable. I am interested in the implications of this concept in relation to the production of our individual realities. I explore the indeterminacy of meaning by presenting incongruent juxtapositions of ideas and materials (found video clips and found objects, a Roomba and a blow-up doll, or spatial situations that implicate the viewer). In this way, the works can offer a multitude of perceptual possibilities that signify reality. I want viewers to find connections in my artwork to their own experiences, but at the same time destabilize their understanding of their own perceived reality: vacillating between a feeling of the unfamiliar and the recognizable. I believe it is here—when a person can consider new possibilities of being—that they are receptive to change.
Aspects of humor in the work provide both an entryway for viewers, but also similarly challenges them to consider the work. I am interested in presenting elements with an ‘air’ of fact: utilizing techniques of deadpan humor to destabilize the viewer’s understanding of what they are witnessing, prompting them that they will be given no answers and thus encouraging them to create their own meaning.
I frequently employ the use of the found object for two reasons: to remove the artists’ hand (thus serving as my own proxy) and to question the limits of memory of these material objects. I am curious how objects can transform from something of value to their original owners into being forgotten, second-rate commodities.
I use my work to critique institutions such as the art world, the role of women in society, and of commercialism by utilizing the art context as a material and metaphor for the invisible power structures that not only produce value, but also inequity.
Studio Art (Summer Low Residency MFA) Students
Nugent Koscielny - not exhibiting