Selected images from Dictionary series

. . . In my Dictionary series I have tried to address mis-representation within didactic illustrations by developing narratives suggested in the images--narratives otherwise hidden within textbook rhetorical strategies. Elsewhere I have written about the guise of objectivity or the aesthetics of truth: formal devices we have come to associate with objectivity, e.g. assuming a universal and anonymous subject, privileging the visible over other senses, labeling, measuring, etc.

In response to this narrow reduction of human experience, I give voice to the silent subject and tell stories not yet told. I include allusions to sensuality and to sexuality--human aspects that elude quantification but that very much inform our history of repesentation, and which are, on some level, at play in the original text sources. My use of paint shifts images into the realm of portraiture and various formal devices breath life into the static subjects. Mimicing artifacts of reproduction, e.g. the drop out of information by over-photocopying, here symbolizes the act of mediation. Most importantly this work helps us think about the manufacture of meaning, including the denial of gendered or other subtexts, and the exclusion of whole human experience within our most revered knowledges. Huh?