Ciara Doelman
Stop sulking and get back to work!
Technological advancements come from the human desire to upgrade. However, human inventions are inevitably anthropomorphised, created as they are by the 'anthro'. Tables have legs. Computers think.
I am curious about how we try to remove human affinity from the technologies that we use, but they are necessarily imbued with subjectivity because we created them; they hold our trace, they are made for the Anthropocene. Similarly, a fluidity between vitality and utility exists in all humans who participate in a labouring society. The relationship between these impressions is not always harmonious. The feeling of the hot sun on the farmer's skin, or through the window of an office block, has no relevance to the worker's productivity, but it still exists.
I believe technological anthropomorphism is similar to the notion that painting holds a remnant of the artist's subjectivity. In consideration of this, my work aims to explore how painting can evoke a sense of both vitality and utility, to achieve a feeling of embodiment in the viewer.
Paintings are not simply a shared imagination; they are material, corporeal objects that hold a place in a three-dimensional world. The way a sculpture or technology (body) is made also contains subjectivity. I want what I make to include an ergonomic potential for a utility that is interrupted by a sense of liveliness.
