ARTIST STATEMENT

Influenced by Buddhist philosophy, my work reflects the idea that the individual is part of an inter-dependent whole. In my work, the human being is front and center. Here one person represents the whole of humanity; within the one, there is endless change. The sculptures and images are reduced to an object of thought, taking the viewers out of their conventional reality creating a metaphor for the stand-ins for all humanity, denying the "real" and simultaneously affirming it.

Through the depiction of the human form, distilled to a non-specific, generic state, I am exploring and attempting to understand the place of human beings in the world by stripping myself of my uniqueness. In the sculptures, my body becomes a metaphor for humanity; removed of the personal and social identity the heads are androgynous in its nature.

In both my sculpture, and in the digital photographic Twin Series I meld genders and explore the perceptions that society and politics have around sexual characteristics and preferences, color, age, and roles. And as part of this process, this exercise of removing all surface traits that connote me, I am reduced to an essential form of we. Through the activity of attempting to re-shape conventional perceptions of those who view my work, it is also my attempt towards a unification of my own physical, emotional and spiritual self.

Arlene Rush
2010