Bennie Flores Ansell
Houston, TX
Artist's Statement:
Imelda Marcos and her infamous shoe collection are highly associated with the Filipino collective identity and consequently, my identity as a Filipino American. My works examine the interface of the values of beauty, identity, gender and classification. . Women traditionally seen as objects of desire, turn shoes into their own objects of desire. The digital photo constructions of shoe-butterflies create two halves of an unusable pair to be worn. However, a transparent structure that could be found in nature emerges and is pinned to the wall or in an insect collection box. The symmetry of the butterfly is misleading, as is any strictly visual identity. The cultural associations with visual identities create false classification systems and templates. My installation art works on many levels. The initial overall view of the installation creates a seemingly natural experience, as if the hand cut transparencies had just landed on the gallery walls. At first glance, the installation appears as a swarm of butterflies or moths on a migratory path North or South. Upon further investigation and a closer look, the shoes that create the butterflies become visible, so what was initially thought to be a butterfly is turned on its head when the discovery takes place that they are actually thousands of pairs of manmade high heel shoes. The shoe butterflies are most complex and fragile seen in installations. I have been placing fans on the installations to give the shoe butterflies movement, as if moving their wings for flight, however pinned to the wall they are immobile. Fashion that commodifies and classifies female beauty creates a connection to Science that also codes and classifies all natural phenomena.
