Mari Anne

Creative Statement

MESSAGE IS THE ORDERING OF A SIGNAL.
THIS MESSAGE IS THE FRAMEWORK OF AN ALTERNATIVE EDUCATION SYSTEM, ONE WHICH ARRANGES LIVING PLANETARY SIGNALS INTO MEANINGFUL MESSAGES. Mari Anne{x} (°1982, Lawrence , United States) makes photos, paintings, photos and installations. By taking daily life as subject matter while commenting on the everyday aesthetic of middle class values, Anne{x} makes work that generates diverse meanings. Associations and meanings collide. Space becomes time and language becomes image.
Her photos demonstrate how life extends beyond its own subjective limits and often tells a story about the effects of global cultural interaction over the latter half of the twentieth century. It challenges the binaries we continually reconstruct between Self and Other, between our own ‘cannibal’ and ‘civilized’ selves. By demonstrating the omnipresent lingering of a ‘corporate world’, she formalizes the coincidental and emphasizes the conscious process of composition that is behind the seemingly random works. The thought processes, which are supposedly private, highly subjective and unfiltered in their references to dream worlds, are frequently revealed as assemblages.
Her works question the conditions of appearance of an image in the context of contemporary visual culture in which images, representations and ideas normally function. By creating situations and breaking the passivity of the spectator, she often creates work using creative game tactics, but these are never permissive. Play is a serious matter: during the game, different rules apply than in everyday life and even everyday objects undergo transubstantiation.
Her works are based on inspiring situations: visions that reflect a sensation of indisputability and serene contemplation, combined with subtle details of odd or eccentric, humoristic elements. By experimenting with aleatoric processes, her works references post-colonial theory as well as the avant-garde or the post-modern and the left-wing democratic movement as a form of resistance against the logic of the capitalist market system.
Her works are characterised by the use of everyday objects in an atmosphere of middleclass mentality in which recognition plays an important role. By studying sign processes, signification and communication, she wants the viewer to become part of the art as a kind of added component. Art is entertainment: to be able to touch the work, as well as to interact with the work is important.

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