Wallpaper and Negligee (Slipping...) in "Manufractured" at Museum of Contemporary Craft

handmade wallpaper printed with blood and sculpture made from facial peel in exhibition exploring materials and craft
Artwork

Wallpaper and Negligee (Slipping...) in "Manufractured" at Museum of Contemporary Craft

2008
Museum of Contemporary Craft
Portland, OR

site-specific installation for "Manufractured"
Curated by Steven Skov Holt & Mara Holt Skov

wallpaper hand block-printed with blood and sculpture made with facial peel
86 H × 96 W × 48 D in (installation dimension)

Exhibition Catalog with introduction by Namita Gupta Wiggers
Exhibition brochure with essay by the curators (PDF)

Manufractured
website

Wallpaper is hand block-printed wallpaper. The traditional pattern is printed using the artist's own blood as ink. The pleasing pattern functions as a camouflage for the uneasy biological matter. The interplay of the pattern and material evoke a narrative of uncomfortable truths seeping through pleasing facades. The installation is accompanied by "Negligee (Slipping Into the Skin of Another)", a sculpture made with remnant cosmetic facial peel and embellished with computerized machine embroidery.

Wallpaper is hand block-printed wallpaper. The traditional pattern is printed using the artist's own blood as ink. The pleasing pattern functions as a camouflage for the uneasy biological matter. The interplay of the pattern and material evoke a narrative of uncomfortable truths seeping through pleasing facades. The installation is accompanied by "Negligee (Slipping Into the Skin of Another)", a sculpture made with remnant cosmetic facial peel and embellished with computerized machine embroidery.

anti-utopias: Digital Art Series

…An ‘organic cyborg nature’ of the human is unveiled in Laura Splan’s work…Splan’s mixture of scientific and domestic…guides the viewer through an array of captivating approaches that challenge not only current media ideologies but also conceptual paradigms underlying today’s digital art, the question of disembodiment…

Textiel Plus

...While it is easy to emphasize the shock effect of Laura Splan’s work, it is much more interesting to make the viewer aware of the meaning behind it...

American Craft

...Laura Splan disturbs our notions of beauty and femininity by crafting traditionally feminine objects out of unpredictable materials. By using the body as material for textile-based craft, historically thought of as women’s work, Splan shifts the conversation about her work in a way that hearkens back to Miriam Schapiro’s femmage pieces. But in its nearly painful intimacy with the body, Splan’s work has a fresh and universal application: all viewers have their own bodies to contemplate...

ArtXX: Radical Art Magazine

...Laura Splan transforms our human temporality into both comforting and unsettling art. It’s magical, heart-stopping...

Fiberarts Magazine

...Shocking, sexy and uncomfortable are all words that could be used to describe the anatomical art of Laura Splan...these...pieces imply notions of femininity, domesticity, and familiarity alongside confrontational ideas of indulgence, mortality, and body politics...

Kitchen Sink

...Such is the nature of Splan’s work though, with its willingness to explore what happens when you combine the familiar or domestic with the less comfortable realities of the human body and medical biology...although it would be easy to focus on the shock-value of Splan’s work...there’s something far more revealing about having to re-think an image after its process is shown to lie a little closer to the bone than we’re comfortable with...”

Museum of Contemporary Craft