Mary Skrenta
MaterialSmith

I’ve always been fascinated by the way many Americans enjoy sex secretly, but can’t openly admit it or talk about it. I conclude, from personal experience and academic research, that this is completely unnatural. Societal standards, culture, and organized religion have all affected our attitudes about sex negatively. Artifact/Evidence addresses these issues. I use semen on innocuous yet seemingly erotic images to soil the beautiful, abstracted images with the very product of the act. The dried semen is the real truth: the sex we love behind closed doors, a dirty secret, a stain, but not covered or cleaned up; instead it is displayed for the world to see. For every dry stained image there is an accompanying piece, an image of that image, strategically captured when the fluid was wet, glistening in the light, like dew on a flower petal or lip gloss on a pretty girl. These wet looking images are the evidence, a socially acceptable, palatable, Hollywood version of sex we have been trained to see as beautiful. The dried stained images are the dirty artifacts, the truth we are protected from by our own ignorance.

Using Format