Les Cadeaux des Rues, 6'x5', found objects on paper, 1998-9

Moving Fence, 4'x10'x5', mixed media, 1995

Cadeaux des Rues. These gifts from the street, "trash" picked up off the street during my 1998 trip to Mali.

Moving Fence. Made for an exhibition entitled Global Sweatshop in response to GATT and NAFTA, this piece examines the development of the South African textile industry from the employers of white women, then black men and finally black women, and the social engineering necessary to accomplish such changes in personnel. The work has two horizontal corrugated steel sheets hung several feet out from the wall with text about the subject written on it with a welding torch. To the side of each of the corrugated panels and towards the wall are hanging clear acetate sheets with black text also about the textile industry and social engineering. Projected on each of the corrugated panels is a slide image of South African rural women, the final employees in this story. The text from the corrugated panels, which have been formed by holes cut through the steel are more legible on the wall behind the piece on which they are projected by the light of the slide. But it can only be read through the acetate panels with their black text. The text becomes multi-layered patterning.