Amy Ritter

Lives and works in Brooklyn, NY, USA

Artist statement

I am influenced by working class people, their stories, workplaces, homes, and bodies; specifically those living in mobile homes. Tangentially I’m curious about my queer female body at work, as another building material, a symbol of invisible labor, stemming from a haunting feeling of a history and class that I can’t escape. My work is situated in sculpture, site-specificity, queer-identity and social practice. The work is an exploration of my relationship to my physical self vis-à-vis mobile homes and their interior landscapes. It stages my memories of my experience of growing up in a mobile home community—a place I’ve left but still feel rooted to. For the past 6 years I’ve documented mobile home parks (over 50 sites) and interviewed residents; compiled research on the mobile home industry and culture; and created and exhibited work influenced by these rudimentary archives I’ve built and my personal history growing up in a double-wide trailer in eastern Pennsylvania. I’m continuing to visit mobile home parks throughout the United states, systematically archiving with overarching research questions around the American Dream, specifically the myth of social mobility and the stigma and shame around places we call home. Ubiquitous American Dream ideology teaches us to blame ourselves for lack of social mobility. Yet research shows working class Americans rarely leave their social class. I know firsthand this unwarranted shame is amplified living in a MH: socio-spatial...

Artwork