ARTIST STATEMENT
Static Hourglass 1-6, Sondra N. Arkin, cherry tomato containers, shredded financial documents, adhesive, 2020
During quarantine, my anxiety manifested in both hoarding and tidying. One outcome was that I retained single-use plastics.
In earlier sculpture, custom Plexiglas vitrines hold shredded diaries and newspaper. No longer willing to use virgin materials, I began using these single-use containers as vitrines. Time seemed to be standing still and the chance shape of the hourglass emerged.
The exterior comes from cherry tomato containers from Mexico, originally sealed with stickers created to connect us to the packers. These imported “treats” became emblematic of our world interconnectedness although most of my vegetables come from a local CSA. Was this purchase helping economically or hurting ecologically?
The interior is shredded financial documents. I’m continually organizing my world “for the future” so that heirs have less to address. These shreds of financial documents symbolize a significant portion of my life as they embody the result of my “labor.”
These works represent the warping of time symptomatic of this health- and socio-political crisis, crammed full of data remnants—while referencing economic and environmental concerns.
They are offered individually but shown together to represent, vita brevis, that life is short, and made shorter by all that we give to the purely economic. The static period of lockdown altered perceptions of time and economics and what we should be doing for the planet and with our lives.
Wallmountables 2021, July 9 - August 22, 2021, DCAC, 2438 18th St NW, WDC