Place Setting was created during a fellowship at the Women's International Study Center in Santa Fe, where I lived and created work in 2021. The images and films I made during my fellowship take inspiration from the archive of personal artifacts of three generations of women of the family who founded the space beginning in the 1800s. The film was produced using grant money awarded to me by the Acequia Madre House Museum in Santa Fe. The museum also produced a solo exhibition of the film and images. The project has gone on to be featured in international contemporary art publications such as. South West Contemporary, Hunger Mag, Creative Boom, Lens Scratch and appearing as a feature story on contemporary art "attacks" - the German feminist magazine. The Film Place Setting film has had its west coast premiere this past fall at The Mill Vally Film Festival as part of the Mind The Gap, a program highlighting women filmmakers.
A large inspiration for this work came from the religious idolatry of the Vergin Mary seen throughout New Mexico. I was interested in examining the way in which her mythology parallels the expectations of women. Specifically, the dichotomy to protect virtue as a commodity that can be sold through marriage and reproduction and the expectation to promote fertility through sexuality. I hope that this work takes the viewer through a narrative to consider notions of reproductive politics. And to examine domestic labor as a spiritual offering and an act of feminist rebellion.
