Note on Installations

For 15 years, from age 15-30, I made images—I would go to a space, often an abandoned building, build an installation there, and do a self portrait performance for my camera. The end result was a photograph, but what I came to realize over time was that I was giving people a window into what I saw and experienced. I started building site-specific installations years ago when I realized that what I really wanted to do is to give people a complete environment to experience for themselves. They take place in a small room, with a certain quality of light, usually the whole space is treated—the 4 walls and ceiling and floor, so the experience is immersive. There are often organic forms and some photographic materials, sometimes there is a smell (like from the olive pollen), often there are elements you can participate with, even by accident. I am attracted to them because the mood is so complete, but they are problematic because creating a whole environment is so labor intensive, and they have to be reconfigured for each space. They are also hard to document accurately—you can get a sense of what it looked like but not what it felt like to be there.