hysteria
Hysteria explores issues surrounding women’s emotions and sexuality, and their social manifestations. In reproducing some of the salient elements of the nineteenth-century iconography and language associated with the hysterical condition, Hysteria scrutinizes images and treatments that have influenced contemporary attitudes toward women and their bodies. It analyzes the psychological long-term impact that medicine, the media, and general oppressive images and attitudes have on women.
monuments
These ten-foot fiberglass sculptures of two female torsos abstract the body creating a concentration as well as a disruption of space. At first glance, the sculptures look like alabaster, solid and chiseled. Upon walking around the sculptures, one finds that they are hollow shells with positive and negative imprints. This transposition creates a solid frontal view and an inner shell-like view from behind. This monumental deconstruction of the female body presents and creates a dialogue regarding the demystification of the female body, as well as challenging new perceptions of historical representations of the female body.
portraits
Portraits is composed of thirty-three, 6” x 8” black and white photographs and eight 3” x 6” color photographs. These are abstract portraits of female genitals. By individuating this particular part of the anatomy Beth B attempts to demystify this most vulnerable, private, and exploited part of the body. This exhibition looks to celebrate the seductive and sensual aspects reveling in the extraordinary distinctiveness of size, shape, contour, and coloration. These are portraits that reveal the uniqueness of our sexuality in portraitures that capture a moment of innocence, a feeling of precious beauty.
out of sight / out of mind
Out of Sight/Out of Mind is an intense study of the physical, psychological, and social breakdown of the human condition. The media installation questions a system that has lost its aspiration to reform, while adding the TV docu-drama style of the late 20th century that drives our knowledge of accepted views of truth, reality, and delusion. Out of Sight/Out of Mind contains three key features: a sculptural structure made up of six padded isolation cells with audio, a large-scale video projection, and a replica of a medical device called the “rotary machine.” Audio elements range from Van Gogh’s letters to the writings of Antonin Artaud.
trophies
Trophies is an installation by multi-media artist Beth B which seeks to investigate the art of female teratology: the study of monstrosities, malformations, and severe deviations from the normal morphological order. The installation takes the form of 9 sculptural ‘trophies’ of female mutilations including Chinese footbinding, anorexia, silicone breast implantation, corseting, etc… It gives an historical overview into the various ways women have been deformed and transformed by self-choice, by science, and by other human beings.
under lock and key
Under Lock and Key speaks to the entrapment we feel when caught in the violence of being attacked, and of the attacker himself caught in the web of his own imagined powers, fears and eventual incarceration. This digital/sculpture installation exposes the perpetrators of violence by revealing their words and the words of their victims. The work creates a dialogue and intersection between multiple characters as we enter into the experience of violence and the prisons we live in physically and emotionally. Excerpts are sourced from In the Belly of the Beast by Jack Henry Abbott and interviews with serial killer, Ted Bundy.
