Gesture and Change | Collaborative Explorations

I collaborated with fellow residents at Hospitalfield Residency in Scotland and Monson Arts in Maine, applying Bertolt Brecht’s ideas of gesture or “gestus” further. In Scotland, I asked others to arrange their body to show a state of mind that they would like to change. I painted them in this pose and they then responded to this image of themselves through a series of Brechtian exercises. Their written responses are included verbatim. They then sat for me in a “gestus” of the mindset they seek, which I then painted. For a summative response to the exercises, they covered their hands in kneadable graphite and executed a gestural mark to express the shift from one pose to the other.

In Maine, I invited others to direct the image of themselves in their default gesture, to collaborate on the composition, to add marks and writing directly on the work. Each collaborator also signed the work.