MEG KLOSTERMAN
Young American(e)s
** Please note, the title was changed.**
October- December 2018
Digital Prints, 35mm Black and White Film ( printed on fiber paper), found photographs, various installation materials
For the installation, the rug was soaked in gin and cigarette smoke was blow on to it.
This work is an installation alongside a wall of portraits of young women. The portraits straddle a line between being nostalgic and being contemporary. Along with the film and digital portraits, there are polaroids from the early 2000s and vintage photographs dating back to the 1950s. The women are bold, powerful, graceful, and possess a sense of peace. However, the installation below gives the opposite effect. It’s discomforting and unsettling.
The work is intended to make people's minds wonder. I want the audience to think of the iconography in the context of their own lives. When you experience the work, you are first met with the smell of alcohol and you hear music. The song, playing on repeat, is It’s all over now Baby Blue by Bob Dylan. The song is about a serial killer in the 1950s that tricked innocent, virgin young women to fall in love with him, sleep with him, and run away with him, just so he could murder them.
The installation gives the feeling of someone being present. There are lipstick marks on the cocktail glass. The packet of cigarettes on the end table has been opened. A woman's nightgown and apron are draped on a chair. The phone is off of its reciever. The installation is also cluttered with empty birth control packets, fresh flowers, small American flags.