MARIAH TATE KLEMENS

Latex, Breath

14,400 Breaths illustrates the number of breaths I would personally take during a day of rest. 14,400 becomes the literal process of capturing concretely my own respiration to make manifest the idea of a day that did not exist. My life, my breath, has been forced into balloons that will eventually seep from or explode out of, but, in the present, at least in this image, are full of breath and movement for viewers to explore. The expiration of breath blurs into the expiration of life within the bounds of latex confines.

Plastic Bags, 98.14 lbs of Water, 15.9 lbs of Crisco

The amount of water in my body was measured, weighed, and presented in clear plastic bags on the floor beside the amount of measured fat in my body. The fat was placed on the ground through a performative act of temporarily ingesting Crisco and spitting or kissing it onto the ground. My spit and fat pilled onto and into itself through a process of abjection. The leaky nature of the bags references the temporary qualities of my own physical body.

Bed sheet, Paraffin Wax

To capture a moment in time, or maybe more so an idea of a moment, I contained a body in my bed sheet. The wax holds the moment as a reference to an intimacy between bodies or persons that no longer exists. The body sighs as heat and time force the form to collapse, later only remaining as a sunken shell of its previous form.

Bed Sheet, Paraffin Wax

This sheet documents a moment after it has passed, instead of striving to hold it. For this reason this sheet does not expire, instead it remains seemingly rigid.

Performance Document

In response to the untimely death of my student from an overconsumption of alcohol, I created a memorial performance displaying my conflicted conscience of indulging in actions that certainly harm me. Similar to the popular drinking game, Power Hour documented my exorbitant intake - I drank a shot of beer every minute on the minute for an hour.

Performance Document

In order to physically feel the labor of loss through action, I dug a large square in the earth. This action, similar to many mourning acts, was performed privately. The violence of forcing myself so deep into the earth surprised and distressed me. I filled the hole only after the mass of ground water forced me to finish.

Video

As a type of document to the performative action where I dug an abstracted form of my grave, I looped the sounds of my digging with a small clip of the grave after I refilled it. 

Video Still

Considering the banality of daily tasks, I amplified a moment beyond itself, into something else altogether, something longer. Brushing my teeth for an hour, I documented my extension - moving between the ease of normalcy, into something more uncomfortable.

Performance Document

With no windows in or out, I lived on display, with peep-holes for viewing, for a continuous 100-hours; existing somewhere between solitary confinement and a peepshow. Stemming from both Michelle Foucault’s Discipline and Punish and Laura Mulvey’s Visual Pleasure in Narrative Cinema, I embodied “to-be-looked-at-ness” while living inside of a panopticon - existing both as the guard and the prisoner of my personal display cage.

Performance Document

I created a basket for burning in Whatcom Creek as a process of catharsis. In the middle of November I dressed in white and entered the creek with a flaming vessel. The basket laid on my belly, smoking in burning while I floated in the moving water. After a time, I submerged myself and the basket fire went out

Collected Bus Tickets, Glue
19" x 19"

After getting lost on a bus that deviated from it's route, I felt it necessary to document my movements across Mexico. I used physical bus tokens to record the physical minutiae of everyday existence.

Mylar Balloon Letters

In reference to A.J. Ayer's philosophies on language and truth, I attempted to create an unimpeachable statement residing within the confines of language. There are, in his beliefs, literary no statements invulnerable to a rational doubt, and yet these weighted balloons attempt to find something close. 

17.47 lbs. of Washers, Thread, Glue

To discover the physical weight of five lovers, I measured an average of the weight of metal in four bodies plus my own. These metal washers are suspended at heart height in a floating form. This installation is displayed in a sunroom with three glass walls. 

17.47 lbs. of Washers, Thread, Glue

[Detail]

17.47 lbs. of Washers, Thread, Glue

[Detail]

Mylar Balloons

After creating the Unimpeachable Statement, it was inevitable that the lofty concept must be punctured, the Deflated Statement displays the remains.  

Paper Mache, Tin Foil, Tape

After living in Mexico, not fully understanding Spanish, I returned to the States fascinated with miscommunication. Spanish for "They spoke," the objects in this piece are jumbled just like my comprehension. 

Oil Cans, Water, Food Coloring

While researching the 921 earthquake in Taiwan, I came across the story of a foundational collapse caused by the use of oil cans as filler material in the building structure. Displayed in a grid, like a city, the cans evoke the toxic horror of the loss of life in Taiwan. 

Plaster
6' x 6' x 1"

Gravel Field is made from thirteen pieces of gravel, cast then carved into thousands of individual, delicate forms. Multiplied white plaster bits  combine into one large, easily crushed field of gravel. Instead of a functional patch, the cast rocks became vulnerable objects.

Plaster
6' x 6' x 1"

[Detail]

Plaster
16" x 16" x 4"

Plaster Chicken moves a chicken, as a stand in for a human body, from flesh into plaster, highlighting the fragility of our own internal structures. 

Sugar, Resin
6" x 4" x 3"

In order to make a body more precious, the flesh of the chicken breast is remade in sugar.