Brittany M. Watkins

Lives and works in Columbia, SC, USA

Artist statement

As daily life becomes more deeply entrenched with the screen just a fingertip’s length away, the rapidly expanding consumer culture infiltrates collective consciousness. My art examines the emotional, physical, and political detritus overflowing in present-day America through a lens of psychoanalysis and social critique. I scrutinize the relationship between private, psychological space and its counterpart: the public, edited, physical world. For years, I’ve been collecting things and information as a starting point for large, temporary installations. Whether picked up from a neighborhood street or stained, slept on, and worn to the point of no return, I became increasingly interested in remnants of daily life. In recent years, I began mining bits leftover from these ephemeral sites. I believe the resulting work continues to draw a line between the object and the individual, underscoring widespread socio-economic concerns and fluctuations in stability. As the installation moves from the living present into memory, its physical form returns to waste. Material goods emerge from abject space, an echo of their former selves, clinging to established roles (purpose, value, and worth). I hold these belongings (mine and others) in my hands and imagination, a ritual, in preparation for a performance of deconstruction and rebuilding. Life—death, rich—poor, free from or subject to. Alleged binaries rise as the gap grows wider.

Artwork