Kathleen McHugh

Exposição: 6-28 de fevereiro de 2010.
MUBE: Museu Brasileiro da Escultura
Avenida Europa, 218 – Jardim Europa
CEP 01449 000 - São Paulo - Brasil

I work thematically, allowing the work to be a visual metaphor expressing  issues central to our being human. I develop a body of work by absorbing myself in an idea or problem and letting it take me where it wants to go, creating art while in the process of exploration.  My images operate as both objective sign posts and personal psychological narratives. No matter what the subject matter, one thread expressed throughout all my work, is a fluid allegory about identity and relationship. The suite of paintings represented here is in response to both my anguish and  respect for the people in our world who don't have birth certificates or property titles, usually indigenous or impoverished people, and who are the casualties in the geopolitical conflicts of their region.  In the past, their assaults happened in secret.  It took a long time for people, at  risk for their lives,  to smuggle photos of  local violence to a safe place in order to "show the world" what happened.  Last year, during an art class I was giving at a local housing project for neighborhood youth including African refugees, a girl showed pictures on her cell phone sent to her by someone in Africa. That developed into a conversation about how amazing it is that people who don't have birth certificates or property titles in remote areas of the world can now use cell phones to transmit real time photos to their families in the Americas and Europe.  In an instant, the world had shrunk and I had the feeling that all of us are neighbors.  This suite of paintings is inspired by photos from an isolated region in Latin America emailed to me by a close friend.    The United States is built on a paradox. We're a country of  indigenous peoples, former slaves, immigrants, refugees and illegals. For many of us, our hearts are both here in the U.S.A, facing the future together to contribute our chapter to American life, and forever wandering in the diaspora, grieving for what is lost.