Liz McCarthy

Lives and works in Chicago, IL, USA

Artist statement

I make objects and performances that explore my body in relation to material culture and as an ever-changing body intertwined with human and nonhuman environments. I draw on queer/-feminist notions of agency and identity performativity. As my multidisciplinary practice has evolved, clay and performance became central in evoking close associations to my body, and by extension, to the next body grasping and holding my ceramic sculpture. I use clay because of its relationship to diverse humanist tradition and deep time ecology of the earth. I think of performance as a tool for reinscribing normative social behavior. Through queer-feminist thinking and social history, I learn how ceramics are “useful” and point to broader human behavior and normalized socialization. I craft vessels with multiple whistle mouthpieces. The forms are figural abstractions, referencing my body and non-human and human life I am intimate with. The forms manifest as something between monster, beast, and human. Gripping the form, pursing the lips and pressing them against it, and exhaling one’s breath are uniquely individual gestures. Combining my forms with social interactions in performance, I open space for play, sensuality, wonder, and liberation from the confines of the status quo. How do I socially perform in the world? For whom and what desire do I perform, and how does my body as a material take on meaning through that performance? These questions guide my identity-centered performance practice....

Artwork