Rebecca Horne

Lives and works in Brooklyn, NY, USA

Artist statement

One sentence project summary: Clay Feet is a photography project that probes art history within the framework of mid-life awakening. Quoting sources from early modern art history to twentieth-century scientific visualizations, these photographs embody and critique a cycle of rational and irrational cultural polarities that continues to be shaped by male privilege. Clay feet is a timely project, especially in the context of the aggressive reversals of rights of women, and the current attempts to erase research on women. The project is anti-canonical, developing a counter-archive using feminist strategies of the autobiographical mixed with art history. Reckoning with patriarchal histories of science, medicine and art as they intersect with constructions of femininity is an urgent intervention, rendering the lived female experience visible. Clay feet explores contradictory themes: Growing and aging, stasis and transformation. I use raw, unfinished clay as a metaphor for the shaping of a new self. Covered in clay, I pose as Gaia, casually eating the leg of her captor. The clay self asks: What is the weight of history? Can I bend the arc of art history to channel my power, my rage? Who and what have I created of my flesh? Clay feet combines myth and autobiography, quoting from art history, specifically, Aby Warburg’s Mnemosyne Atlas. In replacing images in the Atlas with my photographs, I’m creating new connections and stepping directly into the flow of art history,...

Artwork