figuregrid.com
This is an interactive diagram by effie bowen
Works and commentary are subject to change
Website designed with taehee.
Q What is Figure Grid?
It’s a diagram displaying the various ways the human figure is represented in contemporary art. It’s an attempt to organize my relationship to all these bodies, and track the evolution of that relationship.
Q What inspired you to create the grid?
There is a human (and artistic) obsession with self replication that I wanted this project to confront. Coming up in the experimental dance and performing art scene in New York, I discovered that performance frequently overlapped with the visual art scene by sharing galleries, museums, and other spaces. The tension generated from these two forms sharing spaces created a perverse curiosity around the difference between the live, temporal body and the static, figural representations of the body. When I started working in window displays, a whole new set of reference points emerged regarding mainstream appeal, and the parameters of design and desire. Figure Grid critically engages with the hierarchies of value and works centripetally to link and organize a collection of artistic works.
Q What about the diagram as a format interests you? For this work and in general?
Any interesting diagram unmakes itself the longer you look at it. Something needs to be dislodged; a crack appears as a reminder that all boundaries are arbitrary. A human made structure can be dismantled at any time. I’ve built something that both makes sense, and is variable, as my senses are. Everything on the grid lives together, for this moment, while also existing in their own historical timelines. By way of a system of sequestration, I am interested in how the lines bleed when I interfere.
Q What is the value of drawing a line if the agenda is to cross it?
Meaning begins to dissolve when the subject is asked to be fixed with the assigned meaning. I’m interested in the grid being read poetically, that is, giving the experience to the user. I want others to be in charge of reading the page and making spatial, linguistic, and conceptual connections. There’s also something about time here: I’m trying to create a resource (and experience) that requires both myself and others to spend time looking, reflecting, noticing preferences, and desires.
Q Can you talk about the choice to use xeroxed images?
Xeroxing the images disturbs the glossy representation that is commonplace for internet and legacy archival images. All of the works can be located in high quality, pristine images elsewhere. I wanted to circulate examples that felt more akin to leaving traces. I’ve gathered the works out of my memory, and how I relate to each is personal–as highlighted by the descriptions. The process of scanning materially degrades the image in service of replicating it.
Q How does color/highlighting play a role in grouping?
It’s a clickable surprise. It’s yet another lens to expose patterns across the pieces, while also disregarding the X and Y axis. Nothing can be all Touch, Don’t Touch, Staged, and Live, but something can be Don’t Touch and Live. Where it lives is determined by another set of parameters entirely.
Q What is the significance of using only objects and performances as work samples?
I wanted to collapse performance and sculpture towards one another. I’ve spent years training in both, and I find the connection between the two to be a foundation of my research. I am constantly addressing material and embodied forms that render, represent, and relate to the figure. This informs my own work, and acts as a compass when I am in the practice of looking at other’s work as well.