Trouble in Toyland (1998)

Trouble in Toyland (1998)

With Mary Tsiongas and Elizabeth Stephens

 Mounted wood cutouts, lighting, sound track, video, shaped rugs

Artists Mary Tsiongas, Elizabeth Stephens and I were invited to help launch a new Gender Studies program at the University of the Pacific by creating a site specific installation for their Reynolds Gallery.

We decided to investigate the dysphoria of gender through the trope of toys, querying students as part of our research. In the installation, toy silhouettes snaked around the gallery walls, following a gender-line delineated by color lighting. Large shadows and the skewed but recognizable sounds the toys make permeated the space. In another room, viewers sat on toy-shaped rugs in front of a television listening to old toy commercials through individual headphones. Their visual entertainment consisted of slowly dissolving abstract colors occasionally interrupted by a quick subliminal flash of image.