Lisa Kokin
Life After Death Described and Explained, 2000
1 1/2 x 2 1/2 in.
3.8 x 6.3 cm.
3.8 x 6.3 cm.
Unique, signed by the artist.
1526
(18)ff. A structured, sutured collage of found text and images, Kokin's stitched portrait of American middle class life material reflects its anxieties and its capitulations to normativity. The volume begins...
(18)ff. A structured, sutured collage of found text and images, Kokin's stitched portrait of American middle class life material reflects its anxieties and its capitulations to normativity. The volume begins by stating that "in the suburbs anesthesia is possible," summing up the argument that the engine of American power and capitalism feeds upon the "dream" of white-picket-fence comfort. Images of children, couples, and architecture are bordered by American flag stamps, themselves an ironical seal of approval of what those images depict. The result is a brilliant, and unsettling, address of the passivity which bleeds into submission to the will of those in power - a distinctly American experience. Housed in a found needle box. Fine.