Please find documentation of recent projects that are relevant to my application below.
Needy Machines
2023 Needy Machines presents a new body of video and sculpture that explores the emotional and physiological entanglement of wellness marketing, AI-powered smart homes, and consumer product design on perceptions of self and metrics of health.
Short and suggestive videos play behind smart mirrors, their scale suggesting the form of a medicine cabinet. A visual and aural mix – including ambient meditation music, health advice written as poetic text, urgent calls for emotional support, and CAPTCHA imagery – offers ambiguous and contradictory instructions to the viewer who is implicated in the reflective surface of the mirrored screen. I question what defines healthy in today’s environment, particularly for women and minority communities. The videos probe whether networked appliances and digital applications can promote intelligent choices for health and well-being, and how these “smart’ and interactive machines increasingly live alongside us in intimate spaces of the home. Wall relief sculptures combine cast beauty products and trendy bathroom tile with the clay imprint of “swipes” and “taps” similar to the gestures associated with touch screens.
More information at Candice Madey
Review by Jackson Arn in the New Yorker
Decision Fatigue
2020In Decision Fatigue my mother stages an intimate, absurd, sometimes painful makeup tutorial, tracing the choices she has made in her life, both large and small, to hold onto youth and remain well. The installation mimics a wellness boutique with an array of increasingly absurd products. Reinterpreted in ceramics and cast resins, they are seductive, caustic, and sickly sweet: Cheeto serums, hand-crafted bars of car air freshener soap, and healing crystals made of Borax.
Installation at HESSE FLATOW
review by Aruna D’Souza
Liquid Gold/Let Down Reflex
2023-Liquid Gold is a series of installations exploring the history of breastfeeding as it has been narrativized, advertised, and pathologized for Black mothers in America. It features the personal testimony of my relatives, set to a soundtrack based on the African-American lullaby “All the Pretty Little Horses.” A sculpture made with ceramics and mixed media continuously pumps a milky substance through silicone tubing. In May 2023 the work was installed in Times Square as a part of their “Midnight Moment” program.
installation at the Ezra & Cecile Zilkha Gallery
installation in Times Square
Fine Lines
2021Fine Lines interrogates the crisis of deed-theft in Central Brooklyn. I took inspiration from real propositions my mother has receieved from unscrupulous realtors.
The letters become beauty product labels and hyperbolic love letters. In a humorous game of cat-and-mouse, my mom walks us through her beauty ritual for a meeting with a hypothetical real-estate developer.
installation at the Queens Museum
web adaptation for The Kitchen
installation at the Brooklyn Public library
research documentation
Thank you for your consideration!