ann hamilton is one of the most influential and recognized artists of our time. The recipient of numerous awards, as well as the United States representative for the 1999 Venice Biennale, Hamilton is best known for her installations. These works stimulate multiple senses, combining the visual with sound, smell and movement. Her background in sculpture and textiles remains evident in her works, resurfacing in her use of textural materials such as horse hair, pig skin, bees’ wax, and even toothpicks. Hamilton addresses issues as diverse as her mediums. In kaph (1997-98), she evokes a sense of mortality and absense: a solitary sitter unravels finely stitched numbers from a silk glove amidst walls that sweat tears of bourbon water while nearby mounds of soil lie covered in white cloth and an unoccupied trapeze sways incessantly. In privation and excess (1989), Hamilton juxtaposed caged sheep and an undulating carpet of pennies, thus contrasting the products of nature with that of man. Material metamorphosis and language (verbal, written and visual) are other reoccurring themes in the artist’s work. Yet, Hamilton’s explorations are not limited to installation, as she employs other media such as photography and film.

Throughout the years of 1984-93, Hamilton worked on the body object series, sixteen photographs depicting Hamilton’s body in relation to several different objects ­ a chair, a shoe, a door, etc. She produced many of these images while earning her MFA at Yale, thus they provide documentation of early ideas Hamilton has developed over time. In body object series #8, paddle (1984/1993), Hamilton covers her face with that of a flat, blank racket. She illustrates the relationship between animate body and inanimate object. The paddle becomes an extension of Hamilton herself, or perhaps Hamilton an extension of the paddle. Devoid of sight, speech, and expression, the object replaces her face in a comical though disturbing manner. The separation of 'human-ness' and 'object-ness' blur. The image also testifies to Hamilton’s fascination with the process of transformation and foreshadows later work that focuses upon of the making of materials and the relation of product to source.

body object series #16, flour (1993) was executed a number of years after the other works in the series and marks a beginning point for much of Hamilton’s recent work. Her pursuit within the oral realm of language becomes quite evident. Arrested in the midst of exhale, Hamilton captures what is usually the invisible act of breathing and presents it as a very visible thing. She attempts to "materialize voice...the form of language [which], when spoken, leaves no material trace." In the context of the body object series, flour breath is one of the more active images. Rather than connecting the living self with the nonliving thing, Hamilton transforms the animate character of speech into and inanimate manifestation of it.

--Mandy Burrow, MFA, Studio Art, George Washington University