Soundings From Home

Work by Carolyn Jean

June 20, 2003 – July 18, 2003

AMA | OAS Gallery
OAS Main Building
17th Street, NW (Corner of Constitution Ave.)
Washington, DC 20006

THE EXHIBITION
Much of Carolyn Jean’s work is about memory, and the way in which the accumulation and juxtaposition of materials from popular culture causes one to recall previous experiences. She gathers discarded objects – such as an iron, a dryer, a toaster, or a typewriter – and transforms them into reliquaries of chronicle and speak.

Within these objects she finds the traces of its user. Often her machines are commonly associated with women. And so she ravages a washer for its parts, hanging them on a steel rod, much as the clothes they once dried were hung. Or she turns a kitchen sink on its side, suspending it from rafters, as an icon of domesticity.

Through this process, Carolyn Jean considers three sets of hands – those which manufactured the artifacts and materials she is working with, those which used them in their everyday lives, and finally, her own.