FLORA WILDS
MFA New Genres 2021

My practice is committed to a collaboration with found materials, including previously worn clothing and other recycled textiles, often sourced from thrift stores, eBay, and my own archive. As an artist who focuses on commodities in a world of abundant commodities, I feel conceptually and ethically drawn towards using materials that have had a previous life, to buy nothing “new,” and to make my work using the tools most accessible to me (my body, camera, sewing machine). My work is often a collaboration with clothing: time-stamped objects that are reflections of cultural and societal values, class, and labor. Clothing is a primary witness, a memory holder, a residue of identity and intimacy. Clothing is full of physical drama. With my materials and processes, I am often thinking about the language surrounding commodities, the labor and aesthetics of societally indoctrinated gender roles, the pop-cultural and material landscape of Southern California in the 2000s, conversations with and challenges to canonical art historical movements such as Minimalism, and the pace of capitalist realism.
 

Image: “False Neutrals, Fake Naturals,” 2020, photograph of a temporary textile sculpture made out of previously worn clothing (white button down dress shirts and bikini tops)