Margeaux Walter

Sign Language is a series of photographs that collapse everyday life into a form of abstraction. The images are about the fragility of identity in relation to commercial products. Each image is a domestic scene that is then deconstructed into varying levels of chaos and order, obscuring the identities of the figures within them. Focusing on excess, specifically the excess of consumer culture, media and our constant need to capture the moment, Sign Language reveals how these excesses influence personal identity and expression. By camouflaging families, couples and friends into consumer products, these images explore how the idea of home is being altered through the process of constant consumption. For each piece I wanted to form a dialogue with painting - to flatten space, camouflage elements, and transform daily routines and moments into abstract shapes. They reveal a view of human existence that we can't really see with the naked eye, where the human component almost completely disappears. Each photograph is shot extremely high resolution by tiling multiple images of the same set, allowing the viewer to see various levels of abstraction as they move towards the image. These images depict simulated domestic spaces. Jung suggests that in dreams, a house is symbolic of the psyche of the dreamer. My spaces evoke the anxiety of the inhabitant distracted by many stimuli. By using visual cues of advertising - staged environments, studio lighting, and saturated imagery, my work functions as an alternative campaign for the psychological effects of modern life. Using myself as a model I physically experience each environment I build. By acting out my own identities, as well as constructed ones, I blur the identities of the characters I portray while describing the dissolution of the self in postmodern times.