An installation-based project, Breath Holes , incorporates video, sculpture and large format photography.

It isn't easy to fit into other people's skin. You find it hard to breathe; your head feels squished and your butt and thighs get stuck. The skin doesn't want to come off. Plus, it's cold in there. It becomes difficult to separate who someone is from who you remember them to be or who you want them to be.

From four adult male models, I created flesh-like, stretchy suits that I can literally step into and wear. Robed in these skins, I created video and still photos in which I enact the roles of four distinct male characters. The resulting narratives are loosely based on my own life experiences. I am primarily looking at courtship behaviors and the complexity of emotional attachment. The project's purpose is to rediscover and reveal something known and simultaneously unknown about the sloppy stuff of human emotion. I set out to explore the emotional impulses that make us unique among other species and at the same time make us so very much like other primates. It is our nature that propels us in our actions in the name of romance and love. Without companionship, survival is challenging. It is in our biological programming to secure this need.

Additional text on the "Breath Holes" project:

+Mary Ceruti's wall text for the "Breath Holes' exhibition at the SFAC gallery (pdf)
+Alissa Firth-Eagland's YYZ review (pdf)
+Amber Drea's UR Chicago review (pdf)